“How could I get any pleasure out of running things socially in St. Mary’s?” demanded she. “I’ve outgrown it. It seems vulgar and common to me. It is vulgar and common.” “What does that mean?” I asked innocently. “If you don’t understand, I can’t tell you,” replied she tartly. “Surely you must see that your wife and your daughter are superior to these people round here.” “I don’t compare my wife and daughter with other people,” said I. “To me they’re superior to anybody and everybody else in the world. I often wish we lived ’way off in the country somewhere. I’m sure we’d be happier with only each other. We’re putting on too much style to suit me, even now.” “I see you living in the country,” laughed she. “You’d come down about once a week or month.” I couldn’t deny the truth in her accusation. I felt it ought to have been that my wife and I were so sympathetic, so interested in the same things, that we were absorbed in each other. But the facts were against it. We really had almost nothing in common. I admired her beauty and also her intelligence and energy, though I thought them misdirected. She, I think, liked me in the primitive way of a woman with a man. And she admired my ability to make money, though she thought it rather a low form of intellectual excellence. However, as she found it extremely useful, she admired me for it in a way. I have seen much of the aristocratic temperament that despises money, but I have yet to see an aristocrat who wasn’t greedier than the greediest money-grubber--and I must say it is hard to conceive anything lower than the spirit that grabs the gift and despises the giver. But then, some day, when thinking is done more clearly, we shall all see that aristocracy and its spirit is the lowest level of human nature, is simply a deep-seated survival of barbarism. However, Edna and I appealed to and satisfied each other in one way; beyond that our congeniality abruptly ended. Looking back, I see now that talking _with_ her was never a pleasure, nor was it a pleasure to her to talk _with_ me. I irritated her; she bored me.