"You can’t give up what’s been bred into you. And in my case I should be bringing the man—you must let me say it, dad—I should be bringing the man I—I _love_—so little—" "He’s probably counting on a great deal. Poor men who marry rich men’s daughters generally do." "I was going to say that while he’d be giving me so much, all I could offer him would be money; and if I didn’t bring that—" "Well? Go on." "If I didn’t bring that, I should feel so humiliated before him—" He affected an ignorance which was not a fact. "Who _is_ this paragon, anyhow?" "I thought mother might have told you. It’s Mr. Ayling." "Oh, that teacher fellow!" "He’s more than that, dad. He’s a professor in one of our greatest universities. He’s a writer beginning to be recognized as having ideas. He has a position of his own—" "Yes; but only an intellectual one." She raised her eyebrows. "’Only’?" He straightened himself and prepared for business. "Look here, Edith, don’t kid yourself. An intellectual position in this country is no position at all. The American people have no use for the intellectual, and they’ve made that plain." She could hardly express her amazement. "Why, dad! There’s no country in the world where people go in more for education, where there are more men who go to colleges—" "Yes—to fit them for making money, not to turn them into highbrows. You must have a spade to dig a garden, but it’s the garden you’re proud of, not the spade." "And the very President of the country—" "Is what you call an intellectual man; but that’s a bit of chance. He’s not President because he was a college professor, but because he was a politician. If he hadn’t been a politician—something that the country values—he’d still be rotting in some two-by-three university. Listen, Edith!" He emphasized his point by the movement of his forefinger. "We’ve a rule in business which is the test of everything. So long as you stick to it you can’t go wrong in your estimates. _The value of a thing is as much money as it will bring._ You know the value of the intellectual in American eyes the minute you think of what the American people is willing to pay for it. You say your intellectual man has a position of his own. Well, you can see how big the position is by what he earns. He doesn’t earn enough decently to support a wife, and so long as the American people have anything to say to it, he never will. You can box the whole compass of fellows who live by their wits—teachers, writers, journalists, artists, musicians, clergymen, and the whole tribe of them. We don’t want them in this country, except as you want a spade and a hoe in your tool-house. When they try to get in, we starve them out; and, Collingham as you are, once you’ve married this fellow you’ll go with your gang." He pushed back his chair and rose. "That’s all I’ve got to say. Think it over." As he passed out through the French window to the terrace beyond he snapped his fingers. "Dauphin, come along!"