“That was chiefly due to your own mismanagement, I should say,” Mrs. Gower commented tartly.  “Putting the whole cannery burden on Norman when the poor boy had absolutely no experience.  Really, you must have mismanaged dreadfully.  I heard only the other day that the Robbin-Steele plants did better last season than they ever did.  I’m sure the Abbotts made money last year.  If the banks have lost faith in your business ability, I—­well, I should consider you a bad risk, Horace.  I can’t afford to gamble.”

“You never do.  You only play cinches,” Gower grunted.  “However, your money will be safe enough.  I didn’t say the banks refuse me credit.  I have excellent reasons for borrowing of you.”

“I really do not see how I can possibly let you have such a sum,” she said.  “You already have twenty thousand dollars of my money tied up in your business, you know.”

“You have an income of twelve thousand a year from the Maple Point place,” Gower recited in that unchanging, even tone.  “You have over twenty thousand cash on deposit.  And you have eighty thousand dollars in Victory Bonds.  You mean you don’t want to, Bessie.”

“You may accept that as my meaning,” she returned.

“There are times in every man’s career,” Gower remarked dispassionately, “when the lack of a little money might break him.”

“That is all the more reason why I should safeguard my funds,” Mrs. Gower replied.  “You are not as young as you were, Horace.  If you should fail now, you would likely never get on your feet again.  But we could manage, I dare say, on what I have.  That is why I do not care to risk any of it.”

“You refuse then, absolutely, to let me have this money?” he asked.

“I do,” Mrs. Gower replied, with an air of pained but conscious rectitude.  “I should consider myself most unwise to do so.”

“All right,” Gower returned indifferently.  “You force me to a showdown.  I have poured money into your hands for years for you to squander in keeping up your position—­as you call it.  I’m about through doing that.  I’m sick of aping millionaires.  All I need is a comfortable place where I can smoke a pipe in peace.  This house is mine.  I shall sell it and repay you your twenty thousand.  You—­”

“Horace!  Sell this house.  Our home! Horace.”

“Our home?” Gower continued inflexibly.  “The place where we eat and sleep and entertain, you mean.  We never had a home, Bessie.  You will have your ancestral hall at Maple Point.  You will be quite able to afford a Vancouver house if you choose.  But this is mine, and it’s going into the discard.  I shall owe you nothing.  I shall still have the cottage at Cradle Bay, if I go smash, and that is quite good enough for me.  Do I make myself clear?”

Mrs. Gower was sniffing.  She had taken refuge with the pince-nez and the polishing cloth.  But her fingers were tremulous, and her expression was that of a woman who feels herself sadly abused and who is about to indulge in luxurious weeping.