"Mere emotionality. The same thing that keeps me awake after I hear him sing. That proves nothing. It should even make you pull away from him instead of pulling for him. You're crazy, Charles. He has hypnotized you. The idea that a mere thrilling tenor voice and a fine figure could make you lay down your common sense." Mrs. Wilbur's voice quavered and she felt under her pillow for her handkerchief. Her husband smiled in the darkness. "Wait, dear. I don't care whether Diana marries a singer or not. I want her to marry a real man. I was on the lookout for infatuation when I saw you so captivated, and I began to inquire into the facts. I found an all-American chap who had had a struggle from childhood and won out over poverty and discouragement by hitching his wagon to a star. He volunteered during the late war and was slightly wounded. He has a clean inheritance, good muscle, and plenty of red blood. I don't care for the blue kind, myself. In short, he is the sort of man I am perfectly willing our daughter should marry, _if she wants to_." "I tell you--" "Yes, I know. You tell me she doesn't want to. Now, I have an idea we shall very soon learn the truth about that. Barrison has shown that he knows how to get what he wants. In this case, I can see how our money will stick in his crop." "Ho!" from the other bed. A tremendous aspiration. "Don't blow me out of the room, dearie. I know people will laugh at that idea, but I have had lots of experience in reading character. Barrison will have a great deal to overcome in his own mind. He will not feel free to approach Diana. Perhaps, after all, the affair will amount to nothing. All right, if it does. I'm a passenger, now that I feel sure the boy is a clean specimen." "Has it come to this!" ejaculated Mrs. Wilbur slowly. "That Diana Wilbur is to be given to a clean specimen!" "If she so desires," returned the other. "Now I'm going to ask a big thing of you, Laura. It is not to speak to Diana on this subject until she speaks to you. She knows nothing of my invitation to Barrison. We can't handle the matter any further with good effect until the principals declare themselves. You know our girl. You know it is a hall mark of genuineness, a proof of pure metal when she likes a man or a woman. Can't you trust her?" Mrs. Wilbur was lying down now. Her husband heard a sniff or two stifled in a pillow. "I wasn't anybody when you married me, Laura," he went on gently. "Weren't we just as happy when we economized on taking a taxi as we are in this yacht? Our boy would be nearly twenty-three now if he had lived. I would have liked my son to look at me with as clear eyes, to have known as little of self-indulgence as Barrison. It is all up to the children, but wouldn't there be points in being mother-in-law to that voice, when you come to think it over?"