'Put off my voyage now, on the very eve of my departure, with all my plans arranged? It would be impossible, Helen.' 'Nothing is impossible to you in business if you choose, Alston,' she replied; 'but you don't choose. You are carried away by the inordinate ambition to be rich. That contemptible money-worship, which is everywhere sapping the foundations of New York society, has you for one of its high-priests, and my comfort and my happiness are nothing in comparison with your desire for the accumulation of money.' Griswold was silent for a moment, regarding her earnestly; then he pushed his hair from off his forehead, and with the faintest sigh and a grave smile, more in his eyes than on his lips, said, 'You are speaking hurriedly and like a woman, Helen, and do not, I am sure, mean half you say; but even if I have this wild desire for the accumulation of money, for whose sake is it indulged in, to whom is the acquired wealth devoted? Not, I think--' and a grave smile now broke on to his lips--'not, I think, to myself entirely. I go down town in the morning in the stage for ten cents, and I return on foot; my clothes are the standing topic for my friends' abuse and--' 'I know, Alston--I know it all. You are the least selfish of men; and it is for me and for my sake alone that you are condemning yourself to a life of slavery, and making both of us wretched. But this is precisely the reason why I am the person to enjoin you to give it up. We are quite rich enough for my ambition, dear. Stay with me, and let us enjoy together what we have. But for Heaven's sake do not leave me.'