"Oh, no, Stevuns!" She was quite the romantic parasite as she came and knelt beside him in coaxing attitude. "Why, papa wishes me to have everything I want. He would be terribly worried if he thought I had to do without a single shoe button!" "But must all the shoe buttons be of gold?" Steve interpolated. She paid no attention to him. "I'm papa's only heir--the money is all mine, anyway, and it always has been. You know how simple papa's tastes are." "Like my own--like those of all busy people who are doing things. We haven't time to pamper ourselves." "Someone has to buy up the trash! And you ought to thank us rich darlings of the gods for existing at all--we make you look so respectable by contrast." She waited for his answer. He rose and went over to the carved mantel, standing so he could look down the long room crowded with luxuries. "But this place isn't the home of an American man and his wife. It's a show place--bought with your father's money! And I've failed. I'm not supporting my wife. Good heavens, if I were I'd have to be cracking safes every week-end to do it. I can't make any more money than I am making--and stay at large--and you cannot go on living off your father and being my wife. I won't have it! I won't be that kind of a failure!" "What shall I do with the money, throw it to the birds?" Her head began to ache, as it always did when a serious conversation was at hand. "Wait until it is yours and then spend it on something for the good--not the delight--of someone else, or of a great many other people. Be my wife--let me take care of you," he begged, earnestly. Beatrice hesitated. "I couldn't," was her final answer. "I couldn't manage with the allowance you give me--don't worry, dearest, there's no reason at all that we shouldn't have as good a time as there is. Papa wants us to." "Don't you see what I'm trying to get at?" he insisted. "Won't you try to see? Just try--put yourself in my place, make yourself think with my viewpoint as a starting place. Suppose you had been a dreamer of a boy with a pirate's daring and a poet's unreal delusions, and you combined the two to produce a fortune, a fortune everyone marvelled at, the lucky turn of the wheel. Suppose you used that fortune with the same daring and fancy, loving someone with all your heart, to make money in a regular business and under the guidance of a well-trained merchant like your father--and then you married the person you loved and saw her deliberately belittle your manhood by going to her father's house to live, spending her father's money, and leaving you quite alone and without the joyous and needed responsibility of supporting your wife. Now what would you do?" "I'd start right in spending my own money for things I wanted," she decided, glibly.