“This is to be your choice, not mine,” said her father, coldly.  “You shall not be able to say that I sold you or tried to sell you.  Of course it would be terribly hard for me to lose my footing and fall, and I feel that I should not rise again.  Arnault worships success and worldly prestige.  You are a part of his ambitious scheme.  If you helped him parry it out he would do almost anything you wished, and he could throw business enough in my way to put me speedily on my feet.  You must make your choice in view of the following facts:  You can go on living here, just as you are, two or three weeks longer, dallying with opportunity.  By that time, unless I get relief and help, I shall reach the end of my resources, and creditors will take everything.  The Muirs cannot help me, and I don’t believe they would in any event.  I am not on good terms with Henry Muir.  If they go down now they will be thoroughly cleaned out.  Arnault has long been devoted to you, and you could have unbounded influence over him if you acted in the line of his ruling passion.  It would gratify his pride and add to the world’s good opinion of him if I prospered also.  In plain English, we may all be in a tenement house in a month, or I on safe ground and you the affianced wife of a rich man.”

“Well,” said Stella, coldly, “you have given me facts enough.  It’s a pity you couldn’t have brought me something better from Wall Street after all these years.”

“What have you brought to me during these past years,” he demanded, sternly, “but constant requests for money, and the necessity for incessant effort to meet new phases of extravagance?  You have not asked what was kind, merciful, and true, but what was the latest style.  Few days pass but that I am reminded of you by a bill for some frippery or other; but how often am I reminded of you by acts of filial thoughtfulness, by words of sympathy in my hard battle of life when I am present, or by genial letters when absent?  I have spent three hot days in the city seeking chiefly your interest, and a more mechanical, perfunctory thing never existed than your kiss of greeting to-night.  There was as much feeling in it as in the quarter that I handed to the stage-driver.  I have spent thousands on your education, but you don’t sing for me, you don’t read to me, you never think of soothing my overtaxed nerves by cheerful, hopeful talk.  Were I a steel automaton, supplying your wants, I should answer just as well, and in that case you might remember the laws of matter and apply a little oil occasionally.  What are the motives of your life but dress, admiration, excitement, a rapid succession of men to pass under your baleful fascination, and then to pass on crippled in soul for having known you?  Unless you can give Graydon Muir a loving woman’s heart, and mean to cling to him for worse as well as better, you will commit a crime before God and man if you accept him.  With Arnault it is different.  In mind you are near enough of kin to marry.  As long as you complied with fashionable and worldly proprieties, he would be content; but a man with a heart and soul in his body would perish in the desert of a home that your selfishness would create.”