knew, of course, I hadn't married you for money, but
I thought it would sound sort of queer and prying to ask questions about
it; because I hadn't anything."

He had looked up two or three times and drawn in his breath for a
protest, but apparently he couldn't think of anything effective to say.
Now though, he cried out, "Rose! Please!"

But she went steadily on. "You were always so dear about it. You never
let me feel like a beggar, and--well, it was the easy way, and I took
it. I got worried once during the winter when I heard the Crawfords
talking. All those people were millionaires, I'd supposed. They were
going on at a dinner here, one night, about being awfully hard up, and I
began to wonder if we were. I spent a week trying to--get up my courage
to ask you about it. But then Constance got a new necklace on her
birthday, and they went off to Palm Beach the next week, so I persuaded
myself it was all a joke. The thing's come up again several times since,
but never so that I couldn't side-step it some way, until to-night. But
to-night--oh, Roddy ...!" Her silly ragged voice choked there and
stopped and the tears brimmed up and spilled down her cheeks. But she
kept her face steadfastly turned to his.

"That's what I said about being married and not sowing wild oats, I
suppose," he said glumly. "It was a joke. Do you suppose I'd have said
it if I meant it?"

"It wasn't only that," she managed to go on. "It was the way they looked
at the house; the way you apologized for my dress; the way you looked
when you tried to get out of answering Barry Lake's questions about what
you were doing. Oh, how I despised myself! And how I knew you and they
must be despising me!"

"The one thing I felt about you all evening," he said, with the patience
that marks the last stage of exasperation, "was pride. I was rather
crazily proud of you."

"As my lover you were proud of me," she said. "But the other man--the
man that's more truly you--was ashamed, as I was ashamed. Oh, it doesn't
matter! Being ashamed won't accomplish anything. But what we'll _do_ is
going to accomplish something."

"What do you mean to do?" he asked.

"I want you to tell me first," she said, "how much money we have, and
how much we've been spending."

"I don't know," he said stubbornly. "I don't know exactly."

"You've got enough, haven't you, of your own ... I mean, there's enough
that comes in every year, to live on, if you didn't earn a cent by
prac