Constance leaned back quietly in her chair to watch the effect of what she had said. She felt then a hundred years older than Crane, who was older than she, and who knew both law and politics well, but was a child in the science of knowing the world and the people in it--a science in which Constance Maitland excelled. But even her rebuke had a fascination for him. No other woman had ever rebuked him--his wife least of all. “Do you complain of me,” he said, “for telling you my weaknesses, my misfortunes? Don’t you see that what you have just told me is proof of all I have said? You see my faults, you tell me of them, you inspire me with a desire to correct them. No other woman ever did so much for me. Is it forbidden to any one to utter a regret?” “Very often it is forbidden,” replied Constance, promptly. “Unavailing regrets are among the most undignified things on earth. Is it possible that you have lived past your fortieth birthday without getting rid of that school-boy idea that our environment makes us--that a man is made by his wife, or by any other human agent except himself? So long as self-love is the master passion, so long will we heed our own persuasions more than any one else’s.” “I hardly think you understand how things are with me,” replied Crane, his eyes again growing sombre. “Yesterday was an epoch-making day with me. To-day, the first of the new epoch, I make a hideous mistake. It unmans me; it unnerves me. Not often do two such catastrophes befall a man together. I follow an impulse and come to you and you are angry with me. Bah! How narrow and conventional are women, after all! Nevertheless,” he kept on, rising to his feet and suddenly throwing aside his dejection, “no man ever yet rose to greatness without making vast mistakes and retrieving them. This moment the way of retrieving my mistake has come to me. I will go to Sanders--no, I will write and keep a certified copy of the letter--saying that I shall withdraw from my engagements with him. I will refuse to accept the appointment as Senator and will contest the election with him before the Legislature. But--but--if only the man who indorsed my notes hadn’t been in the combine!” As suddenly as he had rallied, Crane again sank into dejection. “You don’t know what it is to want money desperately--desperately, I say,” he added. “N-no,” replied Constance, slowly. “I think I know the want of everything else almost which is necessary to happiness--except only the want of money.”