"I think it's wonderful, Jim!" she exclaimed with enthusiasm. "I'd like to congratulate your friend on his good taste. And just look at those dear little terraces which lead down to the boathouse--on one of them a strawberry bed, on the other a garden, on the last a grape arbor, and then the boathouse, the wharf--and look--a lovely little boat tied to the float--it's just perfect!" "And this outlook over bay and sea and towering hills--isn't it wonderful?" he asked soberly--"the hills and sea with their song of the infinite always ringing in one's soul!" "It's glorious," she murmured. "I've never seen anything more nearly perfect. Whose is it?" Stuart looked into her dark eyes with desperate yearning. "It's yours, Nan!" "Mine?" "Yes, dear, this is my secret. I've been building this home for you the past year. I've put all the little money my father gave me with every dollar I could save. It's paid for and here's the key. I meant to ask you out here to fix our wedding day. I ask you now. Forget the nightmare of the past two weeks and remember only that we love each other!" The girl's eyes grew dim for a moment and she turned away that the man who watched might not know. Her lips quivered for just an instant, and her hand gripped the rail of the veranda. When she answered it was with a light banter in her tones that cut Stuart's heart with cruel pain. "If I'd seen it four weeks ago, Jim, I really don't see how I could have resisted it--but now"--she shook her head and laughed--"now it's too late!" "My God, don't say that, Nan!" he pleaded. "It's never too late to do right. You know that I love you. You know that you love me." "But I've discovered," she went on with bantering, half challenging frankness, "that I love luxury, too. I never knew how deeply and passionately before--" she paused a moment, looking toward Sea-Gate. "Isn't that the anchorage of the Atlantic Yacht Club?" "Yes," he answered impatiently. "Then that's Mr. Bivens's yacht--the big, ugly black one lying close inshore with steam up. He told me he would send her into dry dock to-day. He was talking last night of a wedding cruise in her to the Mediterranean. I confess, Jim, that I want to shine, to succeed, and dazzle, and reign. Every ambitious man has this desire. Why shouldn't I? You say I have rare beauty. Well, I wish to express myself. It's a question of common sense. Marriage is my only career. This man's conquest was so easy it startled me and I came down out of the clouds. I don't know a girl in New York to-day who has youth and beauty who does not in her soul of souls aspire to the highest rank and the greatest wealth. This is perhaps the one chance of my life----" "Do you hold yourself so cheap?"