"Without friends, and she is fond of having friends about her; without any chance of gratifying her spirits or her youth! To make her life still more disheartening, every mail which reaches her from New York brings her only another instalment of my disastrous record. Work it out from her point of view, Chase; then add this to crown it all." He leaned forward towards Chase and emphasized his words with a gesture of his hand. "The first moment when her life suddenly becomes easy, and does so through no help of mine, I--the failure--come scurrying back to share it. No, Chase, no!" He uttered his refusal to accept that position with a positive violence, and flung himself back in his chair. Chase answered quietly-- "Surely you are forgetting that it is your father's wealth which makes her life easy." "I am not forgetting it at all." "It's your father's wealth," Chase repeated. "You have a right to share in it." "Yes," Stretton admitted; "but what have rights to do with the question at all? If my wife thinks me no good, will my rights save me from her contempt?" And before that blunt question Mr. Chase was silent. It was too direct, too unanswerable. Stretton rose from his chair, and stood looking down at his companion. "Just consider the story I should have to tell Millie tonight--by George!" he exclaimed suddenly--"if I went back to-night. I start out with fifteen hundred pounds of hers to make a home and a competence; and within a few months I am working as a hand on a North Sea trawler at nineteen shillings a week." "A story of hardships undergone for her sake," said Chase; "for that's the truth of your story, Stretton. And don't you think the hardships would count for ever so much more than any success you could have won?" "Hardships!" exclaimed Stretton, with a laugh. "I think I would find it difficult to make a moving tale out of my hardships. And I wouldn't if I could--no!" As a fact, although it was unknown to Tony, Chase was wrong. Had Stretton told his story never so vividly, it would have made no difference. Millie Stretton had not the imagination to realise what those hardships had been. Tony's story would have been to her just a story, calling, no doubt, for exclamations of tenderness and pity. But she could not have understood what he had felt, what he had thought, what he had endured. Deeper feelings and a wider sympathy than Millie Stretton was dowered with would have been needed for comprehension.