"You're too poor," she said. He sat back without speaking for a long minute. "Money isn't everything," he said, finally, and with something gone from his voice. "I know," she said, looking off; "but it's a great deal if you happen to want it more than anything else in the world." "Then, if that's how you feel about it, Hester, next to wanting you, I want it, too, more than anything else in the world." "There's no future in bookkeeping." "I know a fellow in Cincinnati who's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar man. Hester? Dear?" "A week?" "Why, of course not, dear--a month!" "Faugh!" she said, still looking off. He felt out for her hand, at the touch of her reddening up again. "Hester," he said, "you're the most beautiful, the most exciting, the most maddening, the most--the most everything girl in the world! You're not going to have an easy time of it, Hester, with your--your environment and your dangerousness, if you don't settle down--quick, with some strong fellow to take care of you. A fellow who loves you. That's me, Hester. I want to make a little home for you and protect you. I can't promise you the money--right off, but I can promise you the bigger something from the very start, Hester. Dear?" She would not let her hand relax to his. "I hate this town," she said. "There's Cincinnati. Maybe my friend could find an opening there." "Faugh!" "Cincinnati, dear, is a metropolis." "No, no! You don't understand. I hate littleness. Even little metropolises. Cheapness. I hate little towns and little spenders and mercerized stockings and cotton lisle next to my skin, and machine-stitched nightgowns. Ugh! it scratches!" "And I--I just love you in those starchy white shirt waists, Hester. You're beautiful." "That's just the trouble. It satisfies you, but it suffocates me. I've got a pink-crêpe-de-Chine soul. Pink crêpe de Chine--you hear?" He sat back on his heels. "It--Is it true, then, Hester that--that you're making up with that salesman from New York?" "Why," she said, coloring--"why, I've only met him twice walking up High Street, evenings!" "But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester?" "Say, who was answering your questions this time last year?" "But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester? Isn't it?" "Well, of all the nerve!" But it was. * * * * * The rest tells glibly. The salesman, who wore blue-and-white-striped soft collars with a bar pin across the front, does not even enter the story. He was only a stepping-stone. From him the ascent or descent, or whatever you choose to call it, was quick and sheer. Five years later Hester was the very private, the very exotic, manicured, coiffured, scented, svelted, and strictly _de-luxe_ chattel of one Charles G. Wheeler, of New York City and Rosencranz, Long Island, vice-president of the Standard Tractor Company, a member of no clubs but of the Rosencranz church, three lodges, and several corporations.