“But I’ll be dependent until—­” Adelaide paused, then added a satisfactorily vague, “for a long time.  Father won’t give me anything.  How furious he’d be at the very suggestion of dowry.  Parents out here don’t appreciate that conditions have changed and that it’s necessary nowadays for a woman to be independent of her husband.”

Arthur compressed his lips, to help him refrain from comment.  But he felt so strongly on the subject that he couldn’t let her remarks pass unchallenged.  “I don’t know about that, Del,” he said.  “It depends on the woman.  Personally, I’d hate to be married to a woman I couldn’t control if necessary.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” cried Del, indignant.  “Is that your idea of control—­to make a woman mercenary and hypocritical?  You’d better change your way of thinking if you don’t want Janet to be very unhappy, and yourself, too.”

“That sounds well,” he retorted, “but you know better.  Take our case, for instance.  Is it altogether love and affection that make us so cautious about offending father?”

“Speak for yourself,” said Adelaide. “I’m not cautious.”

“Do try to argue fair, even if you are a woman.  You’re as cautious in your way as I am in mine.”

Adelaide felt that he was offended, and justly.  “I didn’t mean quite what I said, Artie.  You are cautious, in a way, and sometimes.  But often you’re reckless.  I’m frightened every once in a while by it, and I’m haunted by the dread that there’ll be a collision between father and you.  You’re so much alike, and you understand each other less and less, all the time.”

After a silence Arthur said, thoughtfully:  “I think I understand him.  There are two distinct persons inside of me.  There’s the one that was made by inheritance and by my surroundings as a boy—­the one that’s like him, the one that enables me to understand him.  Then, there’s this other that’s been made since—­in the East, and going round among people that either never knew the sort of life we had as children or have grown away from it.  The problem is how to reconcile those two persons so that they’ll stop wrangling and shaming each other.  That’s my problem, I mean.  Father’s problem—­He doesn’t know he has one.  I must do as he wishes or I’ll not be at all, so far as he is concerned.”

Another and longer silence; then Adelaide, after an uneasy, affectionate look at his serious profile, said:  “I’m often ashamed of myself, Artie—­about father; I don’t think I’m a hypocrite, for I do love him dearly.  Who could help it, when he is so indulgent and when even in his anger he’s kind?  But you—­Oh, Artie, even though you are less, much less, uncandid with him than I am, still isn’t it more—­more—­less manly in you?  After all, I’m a woman and helpless; and, if I seriously offend him, what would become of me?  But you’re a man.  The world was made for men; they can make their own way.  And it seems unworthy of you to be afraid to be yourself before anybody.  And I’m sure it’s demoralizing.”