"Oh! that's it. You think that it's only _I_ who should go down, meekly give up all ambition, because I can't be trusted? You are afraid that I will go wrong?" he retorted bitterly. "No, not that quite! Yet--" she hesitated, aware that the new love between them hung in the balance. Then she went on courageously: "No, I have no fear of that. You couldn't! But the temptation to make money will be before you every moment, and to-day few men can resist that. It is better to be in the ranks than to struggle to lead, and then lead falsely, trying for false things,--false things!" "That is what you think of me!" he repeated mournfully. In spite of all the experience which had come to him the last weeks, all that he had confessed to himself and to his wife, it was bitter to realize that she refused him now that absolute faith and blind confidence in his guidance which had made courtship and the first years of marriage such a pleasant tribute to his egotism. He had come back to her repentant; he had said, "I have erred. I repent. Will you forgive me and love me?" And she had taken him to herself again with a deeper acceptance than at first. Yet when it came to the point of action, she seemed to be withdrawing her forgiveness, to be judging and condemning him. In this he wronged her. What she was trying hesitantly and imperfectly to say to him was not merely the lesson of his catastrophe, but the fruited thought of her life,--what had come to her through her imperfect, groping education, through the division of their marriage, through her children, through the empty dinner parties in the society he had sought, through the vacancy in her heart,--yes! through the love that she had for him. While she was silent, clinging to him, baffled, he spoke again:-- "Don't you see that I want to retrieve myself, and make some amends to you for all that I have made you suffer? You would kill every ambition in me, even the one to work for you and the boys!" "That would not make me happy, not if you made as great a fortune as uncle Powers! Not that way!" "What would, then?" "Do you remember some of those first things you did? The little country club at Oak Hills? I was awfully happy when you showed me that," she said softly, irrelevantly. "Somehow I know you could do that again and better things, too, if--if you could forget the money and all that. Real, honest work! You could be the artist I know you are, the maker of honest, fine buildings!" In the enthusiasm of her face he read dimly once more the long-past dream of his youth, the talk of young men in the studios, the hours by her side on the steamer, when they had come together in the imperfect attraction of sex. It was but the flicker of a distant light, however; he had learned the lesson of the city too well.