will."

"But we're married," he said. "We get along all right."

"Oh, can't you see that that makes it all the worse!" she cried. "I can
stand it no longer. I can't live with you--I won't live with you. I'm of
no use to you--you're sufficient unto yourself. It was all a frightful
mistake. I brought nothing into your life, and I take nothing out of
it. We are strangers--we have always been so. I am not even your
housekeeper. Your whole interest in life is in your business, and you
come home to read the newspapers and to sleep! Home! The very word is a
mockery. If you had to choose between me and your business you wouldn't
hesitate an instant. And I--I have been starved. It isn't your fault,
perhaps, that you don't understand that a woman needs something more
than dinner-gowns and jewels and--and trips abroad. Her only possible
compensation for living with a man is love. Love--and you haven't the
faintest conception of it. It isn't your fault, perhaps. It's my fault
for marrying you. I didn't know any better."

She paused with her breast heaving. He rose and walked over to the
fireplace and flicked his ashes into it before he spoke. His calmness
maddened her.

"Why didn't you say something about this before?" he asked.

"Because I didn't know it--I didn't realize it--until now."

"When you married me," he went on, "you had an idea that you were going
to live in a house on Fifth Avenue with a ballroom, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Honora. "I do not say I am not to blame. I was a fool. My
standards were false. In spite of the fact that my aunt and uncle are
the most unworldly people that ever lived--perhaps because of it--I
knew nothing of the values of life. I have 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 an