"Beauty is always a thing of the soul, Nan," he rushed on. "The things we possess are signs of the spirit or we don't possess them--they possess us. The dress you wear expresses something within you when it fits your beautiful body so perfectly. The mere possession of houses and lands and things has no meaning unless they reveal _us_. If they merely express the labour of an ancestor, the mind of an architect or the genius of a manager, we are only intruders on the scene, not the creator and therefore the possessor of the beauty we aim at. A home, a dress, are symbols, or nothing but goods and chattels. I have seen you wear dresses made by your own hand that revealed a whole conception of life and hats that were poems. The dress you wear to-day is perfect because it expresses you. The clothes of a millionaire's wife have no meaning except conformity to fashion and the expenditure of vast sums of money. The poetic taste, the subtle mystery of personality which you put into your dress have always been a joy to me." In spite of her fierce determination to give no response to his appeal her fingers instinctively tightened on the hand which had seized hers. His own pressed with new courage and he went on. "Bivens may think he owns that big black hulk lying out there belching smoke from her huge funnels. But he only pays the bills to keep her going. It takes fifty men to run her. I have a little sloop with a cabin for two. She cost me fifteen hundred dollars and I own her, because I dreamed every rib in her body, every rivet, every line of her graceful form. I created her and gave her a soul. I feel the beat of her proud little heart in the storm and the soft touch of her sleepy wings in the calm. She is part of the rhythm of my life. "It is not money that gives value or ownership to things. You can only own that which expresses you. For that reason you cannot own the palaces of which you dream. Their service will require a hundred thieving hirelings whose very names you cannot know. This house is mine because I have built it as a work of love and art and expressed myself in it with infinite tenderness and infinite pains. It is not a palace in size, but it is a palace, glorious and wonderful, in a deeper spiritual sense, because it is a poem. Every spar of wood in it is perfect of its kind. Every stone in it is a gem because it is the right thing in the right place. There isn't a shoddy bit of material or a slipshod piece of work from the green tile in its roof to the stone boulders on which it rests. It will last our lives and generations to follow. The very mortar between the bricks and the cement between the stones are perfect because they were mixed with tears of joy that bubbled from my heart as I stood here, watched and sang my love for you----" The lover paused a moment, overcome with his emotion, and he knew by the quick rising and falling of the girl's breast that a battle was raging.