said. "It's a thing I'm glad you let me give--unasked. But
I mean it, Roddy. I've meant it from the first, when I told you you were
all I wanted. There wasn't any string tied to that."

"I know," he said. "But all the same, it wouldn't work, Rose."

"There's a real job there," she persisted, "just in being successfully
the wife of a successful man. I can see that now. I never saw it when it
was my job. Hardly caught a glimpse of it. I didn't even see my bills;
let you pay them down at the office, with all your own work that you had
to do."

"It wasn't me," he said. "It was Miss Beach."

She stared at that and gave a short laugh. "If I'd known that ...!" she
said.

Then she came back to the point.

"It is a real job, and I think I could learn to do it pretty well. And
of course a wife's the only person who can do it properly."

Still he shook his head. But he hadn't, as yet, any reasoned answer to
make, except as before, that it wouldn't work.

"I shouldn't mind the money end of it," she said. "I mean living on
yours. I know I can earn my way, and I know you know it. So that
wouldn't matter. I'd never feel like a beggar again, Roddy."

"I know," he agreed. "But that isn't it. It isn't a question of what
you'd like to be, or are willing to be. It's a question of what you are.
You're something more than just my wife. You've got certain
talents--certain proved capacities. That's as true as that I am
something besides--just your husband. There you are! Try it on the other
way around. Suppose I should offer to give up my practise and come down
here to live with you--be just your husband and, say, your business
manager. You can see that that's preposterous. Or, for that matter, we
could both quit. I've made a devil of a lot of money lately. I've an
income from my investments of from twenty-five to thirty thousand a year
that we could live on, and not do a blessed thing but be husband and
wife to each other. Like the McCreas. But it wouldn't work. You've got
to be what you are, that's the point, and somehow or other, cut your
life to fit. I expect that's one of the things that's been the trouble
with us down here. We've both been trying so damned hard to _be_
something. And that won't work."

"What will work then?" she asked. And this was a question he couldn't
answer.

"We've just got to go ahead," he said at last, "and see what happens.
Perhaps you can work it out so that you can do part of your work at
home. We