I cannot recall that the tone or choice of language was more vigorous than I had long been accustomed to hearing from O’Rane. Certainly I should have taken up the challenge without concern, if Sonia had not rushed superfluously to my assistance. Her indignation, however, in demanding why personal expenditure should be called waste, warned me against taking sides in a family quarrel. “David’s _impossible_ about money!,” she cried. “So long as I have _one_ crust of bread, _one_ dress that would disgrace a scarecrow . . .” “If this is how the poor live, let’s join them!,” interposed Barbara pacifically. In spite of herself, Sonia laughed as she saw us admiring her frock. The house was unpretentious, but it was enviably comfortable. I never wish to be given better food or wine. And, on a lower plane of morality, whatever she lacked from her husband was made up by the munificence of her friends. “It’s so difficult, when every one thinks you’re rich . . .” she began. “But it isn’t our money,” O’Rane objected. Another explosion was threatening; and, at a sign from Barbara, I ranged myself beside Sonia. “You’re entitled to pay yourself a salary,” I told him. “As chairman and managing-director of a trust-company with a capital of twenty-five millions, I think five thousand a year . . .” “I’m pretty sure Sonia will do less harm with it than I shall,” he sighed. “Is that _all_ the advice you can give me, George?” “Well,” I reminded him, “I told you at Cannes not to touch the money with a pole.” “And, as I told you ten minutes ago, I should almost certainly follow your advice if you repeated it. Sonia won’t let me talk about that, though . . . Tell me your plans for the winter. The south of France again?” By the time we left, the last echo of discord was hushed. On our way home, however, Barbara warned me that new trouble would break out if some one did not create a diversion. I hardly know what difference Sonia and her friends expected O’Rane’s inheritance to make; but she was bitterly and undisguisedly disappointed by what she regarded as a life of wasted opportunities. “Get your mother to invite them out to Cannes,” Barbara suggested; and I sent an invitation that night on my own responsibility. It was refused, rather tartly, on the ground that David, as we might have known, would not leave his work and that Sonia, as we might have guessed, would not come, “trailing clouds of infants”, without him. I comforted myself with the reflection that, whatever her provocation, she would not try to repeat an effect by running away; and then I dismissed them both from my thoughts till the crisis in my own life should be passed.