"Maybe you don't understand," said Norman.
"If Josephine were poor and low-born—weren't one of us—and all that—would you have her?"
"I'm sure I don't know," was his prompt and amused answer. "I can only say that I know what I want, she being what she is."
Ursula shook her head. "I have only to see you and her together to know that you at least don't understand love."
"It might be well if you didn't," said Norman dryly. "You might be less unhappy—and Clayton less uneasy."
"Ah, but I can't help myself. Don't you see it in me, Fred? I'm not a fool. Yet see what a fool I act."
"Spoiled child—that's all. No self-control."
"You despise everyone who isn't as strong as you." She looked at him intently. "I wonder if you are as self-controlled as you imagine. Sometimes I wish you'd get a lesson. Then you'd be more sympathetic. But it isn't likely you will—not through a woman. Oh, they're such pitifully easy game for a man like you. But then men are the same way with you—quite as easy. You get anything you want. … You're really going to stick to Josephine?"
He nodded. "It's time for me to settle down."
"Yes—I think it is," she went on thoughtfully. "I can hardly believe you're to marry. Of course, she's the grand prize. Still—I never imagined you'd come in and surrender. I guess you do care for her."
"Why else should I marry?" argued he. "She's got nothing I need—except herself, Ursula."
"What is it you see in her?"
"What you see—what everyone sees," replied Fred, with quiet, convincing enthusiasm. "What no one could help seeing. As you say, she's the grand prize."
"Yes, she is sweet and handsome—and intelligent—very superior, without making others feel that they're outclassed. Still—there's something lacking—not in her perhaps, but in you. You have it for her—she's crazy about you. But she hasn't it for you."
"What?"
"I can't tell you. It isn't a thing that can be put into words."
"Then it doesn't exist."
"Oh, yes it does," cried Ursula. "If the engagement were to be broken—or if anything were to happen to her—why, you'd get over it—would go on as if nothing had happened. If she didn't fit in with your plans and ambitions, she'd be sacrificed so quick she'd not know what had taken off her head. But if you felt what I mean—then you'd give up everything—do the wildest, craziest things."
"What nonsense!" scoffed Norman. "I can imagine myself making a fool of myself about a woman as easily as about anything else. But I can't imagine myself playing the fool for anything whatsoever."
There was mysterious fire in Ursula's absent eyes. "You remember me as a girl—how mercenary I was—how near I came to marrying Cousin Jake?"
"I saved you from that."
"Yes—and for what? I fell in love."
"And out again."
"I was deceived in Clayton—deceived myself—naturally. How is a woman to know, without experience?"
"Oh, I'm not criticising," said the brother.
"Besides, a love marriage that fails is different from a mercenary marriage that fails."
"Very—very," agreed he. "Just the difference between an honorable and a dishonorable bankruptcy."
"Anyhow—it's bankrupt—my marriage. But I've learned what love is—that there is such a thing—and that it's valuable. Yes, Fred, I've got the taste for that wine—the habit of it. Could I go back to water or milk?"
"Spoiled baby—that's the whole story. If you had a nursery full of children—or did the heavy housework—you'd never think of these foolish moonshiny things."
"Yet you say you love!"
"Clayton is as good as any you're likely to run across—is better than some I've seen about."
"How can you say?" cried she. "It's for me to judge."
"If you would only judge!"
Ursula sighed. "It's useless to talk to you. Let's go down."
Norman, following her from the room, stopped her in the doorway to give her a brotherly hug and kiss. "You won't make an out-and-out idiot of yourself, will you, Ursula?" he said, in his winning manner.
The expression of her eyes as she looked at him showed how strong was his influence over her. "You know I'll come to you for advice before I do anything final," said she. "Oh, I don't know what I want! I only know what I don't want. I wish I were well balanced—as you are, Fred."
III
The brother and sister dined alone. Clayton was, finding his club a more comfortable place than his home, in those days of his wife's disillusionment and hesitation about the future. Many weak creatures are curiously armed for the unequal conflict of existence—some with fleetness of foot, some with a pole-cat weapon of malignance, some with porcupine quills, some with a 'possumlike instinct for "playing dead." Of these last was Fitzhugh. He knew when to be silent, when to keep out of the way, when to "sit tight" and wait. His wife had discovered that he was a fool—that he perhaps owed more to his tailor than to any other single factor for the success of his splendid pose of the thorough gentleman. Yet she did not realize what an utter fool he was, so clever had he been in the use of the art of discreet silence. Norman suspected him, but could not believe a human being capable of such fathomless vacuity as he found whenever he tried to explore his brother-in-law's brain.
After dinner Norman took Ursula to the opera, to join the Seldins, and after the first act went to Josephine, who had come with only a deaf old aunt. Josephine loved music, and to hear an opera from a box one must be alone. Norman entered as the lights went up. It always gave him a feeling of dilation, this spectacle of material splendor—the women, whose part it is throughout civilization to-day to wear for public admiration and envy the evidences of the prowess of the males to whom they belong. A truer version of Dr. Holmes's aphorism would be that it takes several generations in oil to make a deep-dyed snob—wholly to destroy a man's or a woman's point of view, sense of the kinship of all flesh, and to make him or her over into the genuine believer in caste and worshiper of it. For all his keenness of mind, of humor, Norman had the fast-dyed snobbishness of his family and friends. He knew that caste was silly, that such displays as this vulgar flaunting of jewels and costly dresses were in atrocious bad taste. But it is one thing to know, another thing to feel; and his feeling was delight in the spectacle, pride in his own high rank in the aristocracy.
His eyes rested with radiant pleasure on the girl he was to marry. And she was indeed a person to appeal to the passion of pride. Simply and most expensively dressed in pearl satin, with only a little jewelry, she sat in the front of her parterre box, a queen by right of her father's wealth, her family's position, her own beauty. She was a large woman—tall, a big frame but not ungainly. She had brilliant dark eyes, a small proud head set upon shoulders that