"What the devil were you walking with that fellow for?" he asked, after Mr. Strangways had left us and while we were continuing our way up-town. He spoke, wonderingly rather than impatiently. "Because he had come from a gentleman who had offered me employment. I had just gone down with him to look at the outside of the house." I could hardly be surprised that Hugh should stop abruptly, forcing the stream of foot-passengers to divide into two currents about us. "The impertinent bounder! Offer employment--to you--my--my wife!" I walked on with dignity. "You mustn't call me that, Hugh. It's a word only to be used in its exact signification." He began to apologize, but I interrupted. "I'm not only not your wife, but as yet I haven't even promised to marry you. We must keep that fact unmistakably clear before us. It will prevent possible complications in the end." He spoke humbly: "What sort of complications?" "I don't know; but I can see they might arise. And as for the matter of employment, I must have it for a lot of reasons." "I don't see that. Give me two or three months, Alix!" "But it's precisely during those two or three months, Hugh, that I should be left high and dry. Unless I have something to do I have no motive for staying here in New York." "What about me?" "I can't stay just to see you. That's the difference between a woman and a man. The situation is awkward enough as it is; but if I were to go on living here for two or three months, merely for the sake of having a few hours every day with you--" Before we reached the Park he saw the justice of my argument. Remembering what Larry Strangways had once said as to Hugh's belief that he was stooping to pick his diamond out of the mire, I reasoned that since he was marrying a working-girl it would best preserve the decencies if the working-girl were working. For this procedure Hugh himself was able to establish precedent, since we were in sight of the very hotel where Libby Jaynes had rubbed men's nails up to within an hour or two of her marriage to Tracy Allen. He pointed it out as if it was an historic monument, and in the same spirit I gazed at it. That matter settled, I attacked another as we advanced farther into the Park. "And Mr. Strangways is not a bounder, Hugh, darling. I wish you wouldn't call him that." His response was sufficiently good-natured, but it expressed that Brokenshire disdain for everything that didn't have money which specially enraged me. "Well, I won't," he conceded. "I don't care a hang what he is." "I do," I declared, with some tartness. "I care that he's a gentleman and that he's treated as one." "Oh, every one's a gentleman." "No, Hugh, every one isn't. I know men right here in New York who could buy and sell Mr. Strangways a thousand times, perhaps a million times over, and who wouldn't be worthy to valet him." His small wide-apart blue eyes were turned on me questioningly.