"Yes," Cosden replied, with a queer expression on his face: "it was a pleasant surprise for him all right. He wrote me a beautiful letter, telling me what a noble, upright thing it was to do, and that he didn't believe another man in the trade would have done it. He even expressed his deep appreciation. Last month the contract came up to be renewed, and he canceled it because another house cut me a quarter of a cent a pound, and I wouldn't meet it." "I never heard of such a thing!" Edith cried indignantly. "But you have the satisfaction of knowing that you did the right thing." "Yes; I have the satisfaction and the other fellow has the contract. But I am only telling you about it to show you why I can't understand Monty. I thought I was showing some of those finer things he says I don't possess. The man who canceled that contract was born with those wonderful 'instincts,' and exhales them with every breath." "I don't believe you do understand just what Mr. Huntington means," she said quietly. "Let me tell you something more," Cosden went on. "There is many a corporation right in the city of Boston that spends more money in lobbying at the State House than it does in producing its goods, yet the officers of those same corporations go around without having their best friends tell them they are 'branded with the ear-marks' of their business. They are just as commercial as I am, and some of them aren't nearly as careful to play the game straight. That is where I can't comprehend Monty's attitude. If a man observes the 'finer instincts' in his business, as I believe I do, why isn't the brand it marks him with a hall-mark of respectability in any society in which he wants to mingle?" Edith had been very busy with her fancy-work, and she did not look up when Cosden appealed to her for an answer. "Now you're getting nearer to what Mr. Huntington means," she said with decision. "You know your business world,--its customs and its standards, and as you have just explained they are not always consistent. The same is true of the social world, and that, as I understand it, Mr. Huntington knows better than you do. The social world has its customs and standards just the same, and in many cases they are equally inconsistent. You can't explain these inconsistencies in one any more than in the other; they simply exist. What you still have to do is to become familiar with them as you have with those in the business world." "That is where the wife comes in,--that's what she's for," Cosden insisted. "That's the very reason I want to marry a woman who knows that end of the game. When I select a partner in my business I don't want him to handle my end, but rather some part of it which he can do better than I can. And the same thing ought to apply here."