"Say what you like, she could at least take you to art galleries and concerts, and count on you as a sympathetic companion. That’s where I failed her. I’m such a duffer in matters of art. And as for music! Lord, I hardly know the difference between Beethoven and a beet." "Don’t let that worry you. For all that Charlotte and I pull so well together, our points of agreement are mostly on the surface. True, we both get recreation from looking at pictures or sculpture and listening to music. But not from the same pictures or sculpture, nor from the same music. She’s all for chastity and restraint in art—Hellenism or aristocracy, you’d call it. She resents Strauss’s volcanic turbulence; Epstein’s rough-hewn symbolism merely disgusts her; the brutal abandon of Augustus John drives her mad. Yet I swear by these artists as she swears by the Donatellos, Brahmses, and Raphaels whose exhibitions of technical mastery bore me to extinction. We really have nothing in common except our recognition of honest craftsmanship and our joy in the clash of temperaments, instincts and opinions." "These differences that you speak of: how do you know that they matter?" "Because they go so deep. Her hopes are not my hopes, her dreams are not my dreams, her gods are not my gods. These things are of the essence of comradeship, and comradeship is the soul of love." "Well, I’m as much in love with Charlotte as any normally sane man can be in love," said Pryor, quizzically. "But on the points you mention, _I_ don’t hit it off with her, either. Her Brahms and your Strauss are equally Greek to me, and I’d give up their collective compositions in a jiffy for half an hour of the "Mikado" or the "Gondoliers." He supposed he’d have to work backwards and find out what the essence of comradeship consisted in. He sincerely trusted that it was not bound up, in his case, with Charlotte’s money. As it was, she was terribly suspicious on that score. She was quite unshakable in the conviction that Robert was the only man she had ever known who was not a fortune hunter. "You see the devilish harm you’ve done," said Pryor, in conclusion, "with your reputation for disinterestedness." "Quite an undeserved one, too," replied Robert, smiling. "Like most reputations it was founded on my deficiencies and not on my accomplishments. If I had known as much about money two years ago as I do now, Charlotte might have a very different opinion of my disinterested motives, as well as of me." He assured Pryor that he would do his level best to free Charlotte from her delusion. In return, Pryor was to keep secret the fact of Robert’s accession to a fortune. "I’d like to enjoy the luxury of being a poor man with plenty of money in my pocket," he said.