your
primary mistake. It's light come and light go with most of us, for the
simple reason that money is outside our real life; whereas with you
English it's the warp and woof of it."

"Oh, bosh, darling!"

"No, it isn't bosh. In your civilization it's as the blood; in ours it's
only as the clothing. That's something like the difference. In accepting
it from Peter Davenant--which is hard enough!--I take only what he can
do without; whereas--"

"I can do without it, too."

"Whereas," she persisted, "if I were to let you do this I should be
robbing you of the essence of what you are."

He drew back slightly. "You mean that your Yankee is a strong man, while
I'm--"

"I don't mean anything invidious or unkind. But isn't it self-evident,
or nearly, that we're individuals, while you're parts of an intricate
social system? The minute you fall out of your place in the system you
come to grief; but vicissitudes don't affect us much more than a change
of coats."

"I don't care a button for my place in the system."

"But I do. I care for it _for_ you. I should have married you and shared
it if I could. But I'd rather not marry you than that you should lose
it."

"That is," he said, coldly, "you'd rather use _his_ money than--"

She withdrew her hands, her brows contracting and her eyes clouding in
her effort to make him understand the position from her point of view.
"You see, it's this way. For one thing, we've taken the money already.
That's past. We may have taken it temporarily, or for good and all, as
things turn out; but in any case it's done. And yet even if it weren't
done it would be easier for us to draw on him rather than on you,
because he's one of ourselves."

"One of yourselves? I thought that's just what he wasn't. I thought he
was a jolly outsider."

"You mean socially. But that again hasn't much significance in a country
where socially we're all of one class. Where there's only one class
there can't be any outsiders."

"Oh, that's all very fine. But look at you with your extremes of rich
and poor!"

"That's the most superficial difference among us. It's the easiest
possible thing to transcend. I'm transcending it now in feeling that
I've a right--yes, a kind of right--to take Peter Davenant's money,
because as Americans we've a claim on each other."

He threw himself against the straight back of the chair, his arms flung
out with a gesture that brought his hands nearly to the floor. "You're
t