Part 5

"I knew that you were rich," she went on, "or you would not have dared offer yourself to me. All my friends were amazed at my stooping to accept you. Your father was an Irish Tammany contractor, wasn't he?--a sort of criminal? But I simply had to marry. So I gave you my family and position and name in exchange for your wealth--a good bargain for you, but a poor one for me."

These references to HIS wealth were most disconcerting, especially as they were accompanied by remarks about his origin, of which he was so ashamed that he had changed the spelling of his name in the effort to clear himself of it. However, some retort was imperative. He looked at her and said:

"Swindler and adventuress!"

"Don't repeat that lie," said she. "You are the adventurer--despite the fact that you are very rich."

"Don't say that again," cried he. "I never said or pretended I was rich. I have about five thousand a year--and you'll not get a cent of it, madam!"

She knew his income, but no one would have suspected it from her expression of horror. "What!" she gasped. "You dared to marry ME when you were a--beggar! Me--the widow of Henry Gower! You impudent old wreck! Why, you haven't enough to pay my servants. What are we to live on, pray?"

"I don't know what YOU'LL live on," replied he. "I shall live as I always have."

"A beggar!" she exclaimed. "I--married to a beggar." She burst into tears. "How men take advantage of a woman alone! If my son had been near me! But there's surely some law to protect me. Yes, I'm sure there is. Oh, I'll punish you for having deceived me." Her eyes dried as she looked at him. "How dare you sit there? How dare you face me, you miserable fraud!"

Early in her acquaintance with him she had discovered that determining factors in his character were sensitiveness about his origin and sensitiveness about his social position. On this knowledge of his weaknesses was securely based her confidence that she could act as she pleased toward him. To ease her pains she proceeded to pour out her private opinion of him--all the disagreeable things, all the insults she had been storing up.

She watched him as only a woman can watch a man. She saw that his rage was not dangerous, that she was forcing him into a position where fear of her revenging herself by disgracing him would overcome anger at the collapse of his fatuous dreams of wealth. She did not despise him the more deeply for sitting there, for not flying from the room or trying to kill her or somehow compelling her to check that flow of insult. She already despised him utterly; also, she attached small importance to self-respect, having no knowledge of what that quality really is.

When she grew tired, she became quiet. They sat there a long time in silence. At last he ran up the white flag of abject surrender by saying:

"What'll we live on--that's what I'd like to know?"

An eavesdropper upon the preceding violence of upward of an hour would have assumed that at its end this pair must separate, never to see each other again voluntarily. But that idea, even as a possibility, had not entered the mind of either. They had lived a long time; they were practical people. They knew from the outset that somehow they must arrange to go on together. The alternative meant a mere pittance of alimony for her; meant for him social ostracism and the small income cut in half; meant for both scandal and confusion.

Said she fretfully: "Oh, I suppose we'll get along, somehow. I don't know anything about those things. I've always been looked after--kept from contact with the sordid side of life."

"That house you live in," he went on, "does it belong to you?"

She gave him a contemptuous glance. "Of course," said she. "What low people you must have been used to!"

"I thought perhaps you had rented it for your bunco game," retorted he. "The furniture, the horses, the motor--all those things--do they belong to you?"

"I shall leave the room if you insult me," said she.

"Did you include them in the seven thousand dollars?"

"The money is in the bank. It has nothing to do with our house and our property."

He reflected, presently said: "The horses and carriages must be sold at once--and all those servants dismissed except perhaps two. We can live in the house."

She grew purple with rage. "Sell MY carriages! Discharge MY servants! I'd like to see you try!"

"Who's to pay for keeping up that establishment?" demanded he.

She was silent. She saw what he had in mind.

"If you want to keep that house and live comfortably," he went on, "you've got to cut expenses to the bone. You see that, don't you?"

"I can't live any way but the way I've been used to all my life," wailed she.

He eyed her disgustedly. Was there anything equal to a woman for folly?

"We've got to make the most of what little we have," said he.