It might have been some comfort to him to know that in the remote spot of his own choosing, a stone bench under a purple beech, Eddie was simply going from bad to worse.

“Dear Crystal,” he began, with that irritating reasonableness of manner which implies that the speaker is going to be reasonable for two, “I’ve been thinking over the situation.  I know that you don’t love me, but then I don’t believe you will ever be deeply in love with any one.  I don’t think you are that kind of woman.”

“Oh, Eddie, how dreadful!”

“I don’t see that at all.  Just as well, perhaps.  You don’t want to get yourself into such a position as poor Eugenia.”

“I do, I would.  I’d give anything to be as much in love as Eugenia.”

“What?  With a fellow like that!  A complete outsider.”

“Outside of what?  The human race?”

“Well, no,” said Eddie, as if he were yielding a good deal, “but outside of your traditions and your set.”

“My set!  Good for him to be outside of it, I say.  What have they ever done to make anyone want to be inside of it?  Why, David is an educated gentleman.  To hear him quote Horace—­”

“Horace who?”

“Really, Eddie.”

“Oh, I see.  You mean the poet.  That’s nothing to laugh at, Crystal.  It was a natural mistake.  I thought, of course, you meant some of those anarchists who want to upset the world.”

Crystal looked at him more honestly and seriously than she had yet done.

“Well, don’t you think there is something wrong with the present arrangement of things, Eddie?”

“No, I don’t, and I hate to hear you talk like a socialist.”

“I am a socialist.”

“You’re nothing of the kind.”

“I suppose I know what I am.”

“Not at all—­not at all.”

“I certainly think the rich are too rich, while the poor are so horridly poor.”

“You’d get on well without your maid and your car and your father’s charge accounts at all the shops, wouldn’t you?”

Though agreeable to talk seriously if you agree, it is correspondingly dangerous if you disagree.  Crystal stood up, trembling with an emotion which Eddie, although he was rather angry himself, considered utterly unaccountable.

“Yes,” she said, almost proudly, “I am luxurious, I am dependent on those things.  But whose fault is that?  It’s the way I was brought up—­it’s all wrong.  But, even though I am dependent on them, I believe I could exist without them.  I’d feel like killing myself if I didn’t think so.  Sometimes I want to go away and find out if I couldn’t live and be myself without all this background of luxury.  But at the worst—­I’m just one girl—­suppose I were weak and couldn’t get on without them?  That wouldn’t prove that they are right.  I’m not so blinded that I can’t see that a system by which I profit may still be absolutely wrong.  But you always seem to think, Eddie, that it’s part of the Constitution of the United States that you should have everything you’ve always had.”