“These women here, all dressed so fine, nothing to do but sit around and eat this folderol, _they_ have it easy--don't they?” The bitterness in it, and a faint note of wistfulness, puzzled her. Certainly _he_ had money. “And the husbands of these women,” he went on; “lots of 'em, I suppose, didn't always have so much. Maybe some of these women helped out in the early days when things weren't so easy. Wonder if the men ever think how lucky they are to be able to get it back at 'em?” She grew more bewildered. Wasn't he “getting it back?” The money he had been spending that day! “Young Lady,” he said abruptly, “you must think I'm a queer one.” She murmured feeble protest. “Yes, you must. Must wonder what I want with all this stuff, don't you?” “Why, it's for your wife, isn't it?” she asked, startled. “Oh yes, but you must wonder. You're a shrewd one, Young Lady; judging the thing by me, you must wonder.” Virginia was glad she was not compelled to state her theory. Loud and common and impossible were terms which had presented themselves, terms which she had fought with kind and good-natured and generous. Their purchases she had decided were to be used, not for a knock, but as a crashing pound at the door of the society of his town. For her part, Virginia hoped the door would come down. “And if you knew that probably this stuff would never be worn at all, that ten to one it would never do anything more than lie round on chairs--then you _would_ think I was queer, wouldn't you?” She was forced to admit that that would seem rather strange. “Young Lady, I believe I'll tell you about it. Never do talk about it to hardly anybody, but I feel as if you and I were pretty well acquainted--we've been through so much together.” She smiled at him warmly; there was something so real about him when he talked that way. But his look then frightened her. It seemed for an instant as though he would brush the tiny table aside and seize some invisible thing by the throat. Then he said, cutting off each word short: “Young Lady, what do you think of this? I'm worth more 'an a million dollars--and my wife gets up at five o'clock every morning to do washing and scrubbing.” “Oh, it's not that she _has_ to,” he answered her look, “but she _thinks_ she has to. See? Once we were poor. For twenty years we were poor as dirt. Then she did have to do things like that. Then I struck it. Or rather, it struck me. Oil. Oil on a bit of land I had. I had just sense enough to make the most of it; one thing led to another--well, you're not interested in that end of it. But the fact is that now we're rich. Now she could have all the things that these women have--Lord A'mighty she could lay abed every day till noon if she wanted to! But--you see?--it _got_ her--those hard, lonely, grinding years _took_ her. She's”--he shrunk from the terrible word and faltered out--“her mind's not--”