ways of making money and only three:
to have it left you like Roscy, to earn it like Granning, and to marry
it--"

"Like you!"

"Like me!"

The others looked at him with constraint, for at that period there was
still a prejudice against an American man who made a marriage of
calculation. Finally Granning said:

"You won't do that, Freddie!"

"Indeed I will," said DeLancy, but with a nervous acceleration. "My
career is society. Oh, I don't say I'm going to marry for money and
nothing else. It's much easier than that. Besides, there's the patriotic
motive, you know. I'm saving an American fortune for American uses,
American heiresses for American men. Sounds like American styles for
American women," he added, trying to take the edge off the declaration
with a laugh. "After all, there's a lot of buncombe about it. A
broken-down foreigner comes over here with a reputation like a Sing-Sing
favorite, and because he calls himself Duke he's going to marry the
daughter of Dan Drake to pay up his debts and the Lord knows for what
purposes in the future--and do you fellows turn your back on him and
raise your eyebrows as you did a moment ago? Not at all. You're tickled
to death to go up and cling to his ducal finger. Am I right, Roscy?"

"Yes, but--"

"But I'm an American and will make a damned sight better husband, and
American children will inherit the money instead of its being swallowed
up by a rotten aristocracy. There's the answer."

"It's the way you say it, Fred," said Bojo uneasily.

"Because I have the nerve to say it. This is all I'm worth and this is
the only way to get what we all want."

"You'll never do it," said Granning with decision; "not in the way you
say it."

"Granning, you're a babe in the woods. You don't know what life is,"
said DeLancy, laughing boisterously. "After all, what are you going to
do? You're going to put away the finest days of your life to come out
with a pile when you're middle-aged and then what good will it do you? I
knew I'd shock you. Still there it is--that's flat!" He drew back,
lighting a cigar to cover his retreat and said: "Bojo next. I dare you
to be as frank."

Bojo, thus interrogated, took refuge in an evasive answer. The
revelations he had listened to gave him a keen sense of change. On this
very evening when they had come together for the purpose of celebrating
old friendship, it seemed to him that the parting of their ways lay
clearly before him.

"I don't k