refused to be silent--was obdurate, insistent,
like Mary Ann herself. "Because--oh, because of a hundred things," he
told it. "Because she is no fit mate for me--because she would degrade
me, make me ridiculous--an unfortunate fortune-hunter, the butt of the
witlings. How could I take her about as my wife? How could she receive
my friends? For a housekeeper--a good, loving housekeeper--she is
perfection, but for a wife--_my_ wife--the companion of my
soul--impossible!"

"Why is it impossible?" repeated the voice, catching up the cue. And
then, from that point, the dialogue began afresh.

"Because this, and because that, and because the other--in short, because
I am Lancelot and she is merely Mary Ann."

"But she is not merely Mary Ann any longer," urged the voice.

"Yes, for all her money, she is merely Mary Ann. And am I to sell myself
for her money--I who have stood out so nobly, so high-mindedly, through
all these years of privation and struggle! And her money is all in
dollars. Pah! I smell the oil. Struck ile! Of all things in the
world, her brother should just go and strike ile!" A great shudder
traversed his form. "Everything seems to have been arranged out of pure
cussedness, just to spite me. She would have been happier without the
money, poor child--without the money, but with me. What will she do with
all her riches? She will only be wretched--like me."

"Then why not be happy together?"

"Impossible."

"Why is it impossible?"

"Because her dollars would stick in my throat--the oil would make me
sick. And what would Peter say, and my brother (not that I care what
_he_ says), and my acquaintances?"

"What does that matter to you? While you were a dead leaf nobody
bothered to talk about you; they let you starve--you, with your
genius--now you can let them talk--you, with your heiress. Five hundred
thousand pounds. More than you will make with all your operas if you
live a century. Fifteen thousand a year. Why, you could have all your
works performed at your own expense, and for your own sole pleasure if
you chose, as the King of Bavaria listened to Wagner's operas. You could
devote your life to the highest art--nay, is it not a duty you owe to the
world? Would it not be a crime against the future to draggle your wings
with sordid cares, to sink to lower aims by refusing this heaven-sent
boon?"

The thought clung to him. He rose and laid out heaps of muddled
manuscript--_op