There was just a trace of pride in his voice--and she detected it. "Aren't you?" she smiled. "To be candid, I don't know. I can't tell from day to day--values fluctuate, you know. I may be a million poorer one day and a million richer the next--and not have changed a single investment." "The bounder!" she thought. "Though it is really my fault--I led him on." For an instant Pendleton caught her eye; and she knew that he had heard, though he was seemingly occupied with Mrs. Burleston's chatter. As for Porshinger, having found that Mrs. Lorraine was interested in his money, he thought to appeal to her by an intimate little talk; he was doing this and that and the other, he was considering thus and so; he had done mighty things (which was true enough), and he promised to do more. He confided it all to her in an indefinite, impersonal way--and flattered himself that he was making a deep impression. And he was--though not in quite the way he assumed. Presently he turned back to Miss Chamberlain, and Stephanie looked at Cameron and smiled. "Did you enjoy it?" he asked, amused. "Some of it," she answered. "You see now what Gladys has done?" "She has but anticipated the inevitable." "And made _us_ in a way responsible." "No one is responsible for the inevitable, Steuart--except the man himself and the power of his money. The combination is irresistible." "In these days, yes," he replied. "As a people, we have become utterly commercialized--we have put everything on the basis of dollars, our social life along with the rest. It is pitiable but it is true. We have no traditions left--or rather we have _only_ traditions left. In some of the towns in the South, they still honor their traditions by living up to them--dollars won't buy a way in, you have to _belong_. But with us--" he ended with a shrug. "Look on your other hand, if you doubt it." "What are we going to do about it?" she asked smilingly--"accept the inevitable, or be exclusive all by our lonesome?" "We wouldn't be alone if we would pull together," he commented. "United we stand, divided we fall. It's the same everywhere," she replied. "We're not united because the old spirit of class has departed. It's every one for himself now--and no quarter given nor expected." "Well, I can stand it if you women can," he remarked. "Don't you think that it is woman who is commercializing society, so to speak--who is accepting money, if you please, to let the outsiders in. She wants a rich husband--if he happens to be her social equal, well and good, but it's the money that moves her." "That may be true so far as it goes--but it doesn't go far enough," he replied. "We men also are to blame. Daughters marry where their parents let them. It may be indifference in our sex and premeditation in the women, but both are about equally culpable. There is small choice between us. We have got far away from our old moorings of respectability and conservatism."