o "sit tight" and wait. His wife had discovered that
he was a fool--that he perhaps owed more to his tailor than to any other
single factor for the success of his splendid pose of the thorough
gentleman. Yet she did not realize what an utter fool he was, so clever
had he been in the use of the art of discreet silence. Norman suspected
him, but could not believe a human being capable of such fathomless
vacuity as he found whenever he tried to explore his brother-in-law's
brain.

After dinner Norman took Ursula to the opera, to join the Seldins, and
after the first act went to Josephine, who had come with only a deaf old
aunt. Josephine loved music, and to hear an opera from a box one must be
alone. Norman entered as the lights went up. It always gave him a
feeling of dilation, this spectacle of material splendor--the women,
whose part it is throughout civilization to-day to wear for public
admiration and envy the evidences of the prowess of the males to whom
they belong. A truer version of Dr. Holmes's aphorism would be that it
takes several generations in oil to make a deep-dyed snob--wholly to
destroy a man's or a woman's point of view, sense of the kinship of all
flesh, and to make him or her over into the genuine believer in caste
and worshiper of it. For all his keenness of mind, of humor, Norman had
the fast-dyed snobbishness of his family and friends. He knew that caste
was silly, that such displays as this vulgar flaunting of jewels and
costly dresses were in atrocious bad taste. But it is one thing to know,
another thing to feel; and his feeling was delight in the spectacle,
pride in his own high rank in the aristocracy.

His eyes rested with radiant pleasure on the girl he was to marry. And
she was indeed a person to appeal to the passion of pride. Simply and
most expensively dressed in pearl satin, with only a little jewelry, she
sat in the front of her parterre box, a queen by right of her father's
wealth, her family's position, her own beauty. She was a large
woman--tall, a big frame but not ungainly. She had brilliant dark eyes,
a small proud head set upon shoulders that were slenderly young now and,
even when they should became matronly, would still be beautiful. She had
good teeth, an exquisite smile, the gentle good humor of those who,
comfortable themselves, would not have the slightest objection to all
others being equally so. Because she laughed appreciatively and repeated
amusingly she had great rep