"Live!" cried Roger, with a sonorous contempt. "Who _does_ understand what it is to live, then--the man who has all his work and worry done for him by some one else?" Truesdale smiled, serene and unabashed. "The world is wide," he said, with an exquisite tolerance. "It is a very comprehensive subject. You must take it up one of these days--you've hardly made a beginning on it yet." "The world!" cried Roger again, with a vibrant indignation at this impertinence. "Who _are_ the world if not my father and I and all the other earnest men who work to make the frame of things and to hold it together? _We_ are the world, and you--you are only the rubbish strewn over the top of it!" He collected this rubbish and constructed from it a Frankenstein monster, with a heart of cork, a brow of brass, and a triple-plating of self-conceit. Then with a harsh laugh and a wide-flung arm he scattered it apart again. Perhaps Truesdale took these words and gestures merely as an example of Roger's forensic eloquence. For-- "My dear brother," he began, quietly, while Roger beat his foot upon the floor, stung to increased indignation by the conscious artificiality of such an address--"my dear brother," said Truesdale, "you don't quite get my position in this trifling episode. Every little _conte drolatique_ has its Monsieur X, of course--myself, in this instance, and rightfully enough. But is Monsieur X the only gentleman involved? Let us see. Who comes before Monsieur X? Why, Monsieur W, to be sure. And who before Monsieur W? Monsieur V, _n'est-ce pas?_ And there is somebody still in front of Monsieur V. And if we go far enough back, we may come at last even to Monsieur A. Now, why are all these worthy gentlemen passed over in favor of _ce cher_ Monsieur X? Well, perhaps Monsieur W, for example, is a captain of dragoons and already mated. And maybe Monsieur V is a young baron whose family won't stand any nonsense about him--families are different. And as for Monsieur A--well, let us put him down for a poor devil of a student who cuts no figure at all. But Monsieur X--ah, that is different! he is pounced upon in the bosom of his family. It is Monsieur X who has the scrupulous and strait-laced mother--" "Truesdale!" "And the little coterie of lily-sisters who never--" "Truesdale! For shame!" "And the over-conscientious and supersensitive father with millions and millions stored away in bursting money-bags somewhere or other. Oh, those money-bags, those money-bags, those money-bags!" "Truesdale, what do you mean? Are they adventurers? Are they after black-mail?" Truesdale threw back his head, closing his eyes and twirling his thumbs. "I knew them there; I know them here." Then he opened his eyes and gave his brother a glance of satirical approval. "_Complimenti_, Roger; you are ending where I should have expected you to begin."