"Don't tell any more things," she murmured, deep in a fruit tart. "I can't understand. You are a big, strong man. Go keep your fortune; let me play. I'll retrench for fun, and you must love me for it." "But you are not sincere," he protested. "You don't earn anything. You don't save anything----" Beatrice sat upright, laying aside her plate and fork. "So you believe that, too," she half whispered. "See here," Steve added, in desperation. "I wish we were back in the apartment--or a simple house. I wish we kept a cook and a maid and you had a simple outfit of clothes and a simple routine. I wish we were just folks--you know the sort--you don't find them any place else but America--it's a tremendous chance to be just folks if you would only realize. I feel as if this were a soap-bubble castle, as if we were deliberately playing a wrong game all round." "You tell papa," she begged; "and if he thinks I'm unhappy he will write me another check." "Then the retrenching is to be the elimination of the fifteen-dollar-a-week professional reader, who needs the work and earns the money, and two courses from our already aldermanic meals? What else?" "I shall send the silver to the bank and use plate. The smartest people do that. I shall make aunty embroider my monograms; she can as well as not--the last were frightfully expensive. I'm going to bargain sales after this, and take cook and drive out to the Polish market. Why, things are two and three cents a pound cheaper----" Steve rose abruptly, tipping over the dainty chair as he did so. He tried to straighten out the pinky rug and set the chair properly upon it. Then he squared off his shoulders and dutifully stooped to kiss his economical little helpmate. "All right, darling," he said, glibly, feeling that Gorgeous Girls were get-rich-quick men's albatrosses, "that will be very amusing for you. It will tide you over until the horse-show season. Now if you don't mind I'm going below to ask what the chances are for some roast beef!" Toward Christmas, when Beatrice had gone to New York with friends and Mark Constantine discovered that dying is ever so much harder than death, Mary told Steve that she was considering a new position, with a firm dealing in fabrics, a firm of old and honourable reputation. She laid the letter from her prospective employers on his desk, in almost naive fashion. It was as if she wanted to show this was no woman's threat but a bona-fide and businesslike proposition. And if she blushed from sheer foolish joy at the disappointed and protesting expression that came into his face it was small solace after the struggle she had undergone before she made herself take this step. "You are not going," he began, angrily. "I'm damned if you do!" "Oh, my dear, my own dear," she murmured within. Outwardly she shook her head briskly and added, "Yes, I am. The hours--the salary----"