but one thing to say in my defence.
I thought I loved you, and that you could give me--what every woman
needs."

"You were never satisfied from the first," he retorted. "You wanted money
and position--a mania with American women. I've made a success that few
men of my age can duplicate. And even now you are not satisfied when I
come back to tell you that I have money enough to snap my fingers at half
these people you know."

"How," asked Honora, "how did you make it?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

She turned away from him with a gesture of weariness.

"No, you wouldn't understand that, either, Howard."

It was not until then that he showed feeling.

"Somebody has been talking to you about this deal. I'm not surprised. A
lot of these people are angry because we didn't let them in. What have
they been saying?" he demanded.

Her eyes flashed.

"Nobody has spoken to me on the subject," she said. "I only know what I
have read, and what you have told me. In the first place, you deceived
the stockholders of these railways into believing their property was
worthless, and in the second place, you intend to sell it to the public
for much more than it is worth."

At first he stared at her in surprise. Then he laughed.

"By George, you'd make something of a financier yourself, Honora," he
exclaimed. And seeing that she did not answer, continued: "Well, you've
got it about right, only it's easier said than done. It takes brains.
That's what business is--a survival of the fittest. If you don't do the
other man, he'll do you." He opened the cigarette case once more. "And
now," he said, "let me give you a little piece of advice. It's a good
motto for a woman not to meddle with what doesn't concern her. It isn't
her business to make the money, but to spend it; and she can usually do
that to the queen's taste."

"A high ideal?" she exclaimed.

"You ought to have some notion of where that ideal came from," he
retorted. "You were all for getting rich, in order to compete with these
people. Now you've got what you want--"

"And I am going to throw it away. That is like a woman, isn't it?"

He glanced at her, and then at his watch.

"See here, Honora, I ought to go over to Mr. Wing's. I wired him I'd be
there at four-thirty."

"Don't let me keep you," she replied.

"By gad, you are pale!" he said. "What's got into the women these days?
They never used to have these confounded nerves. Well, if you are bent on
it, I