was simple enough.  She had been taught by her father to despise drugs and to compel dieting and exercise.  She had the tact which he lacked; she made the allowances for human nature’s ignorance and superstition which he refused to make; she lessened the hardship of taking her common-sense prescriptions by veiling them in medical hocus-pocus—­a compromise of the disagreeable truth which her father had always inveighed against as both immoral and unwholesome.

Within six months after her marriage she was earning as much as her husband; and her fame was spreading so rapidly that not only women but also men, and men with a contempt for the “inferior mentality of the female,” were coming to her from all sides.  “You’ll soon have a huge income,” said Arthur.  “Why, you’ll be rich, you are so grasping.”

“Indeed I am,” replied she.  “The way to teach people to strive for high wages and to learn thrift is to make them pay full value for what they get.  I don’t propose to encourage dishonesty or idleness.  Besides, we’ll need the money.”

Arthur had none of that mean envy which can endure the prosperity of strangers only; he would not even have been able to be jealous of his wife’s getting on better than did he.  But, if he had been so disposed, he would have found it hard to indulge such feelings because of Madelene.  She had put their married life on the right basis.  She made him feel, with a certainty which no morbid imagining could have shaken, that she loved and respected him for qualities which could not be measured by any of the world’s standards of success.  He knew that in her eyes he was already an arrived success, that she was absolutely indifferent whether others ever recognized it or not.  Only those who realize how powerful is the influence of intimate association will appreciate what an effect living with Madelene had upon Arthur’s character—­in withering the ugly in it, in developing its quality, and in directing its strength.

When Scarborough gave Arthur his “chance,” Madelene took it as the matter of course.  “I’m sorry it has come so soon,” said she, “and in just this way.  But it couldn’t have been delayed long.  With so much to be done and so few able or willing to do it, the world can’t wait long enough for a man really to ripen.  It’s lucky that you inherit from your father so many important things that most men have to spend their lives in learning.”

“Do you think so?” said he, brightening; for, with the “chance” secure, he was now much depressed by the difficulties which he had been resurveying from the inside point of view.

“You understand how to manage men,” she replied, “and you understand business.”

“But, unfortunately, this isn’t business.”