“Must you go?” she asked, in surprise.

“I am on my way to a reception,” he said.  She had noticed that he was in evening dress; and now she felt the vague hurt that people invited nowhere feel in the presence of those who are going somewhere.  She did not feel it for herself, but for her daughter; and she knew Alma would not have let her feel it if she could have prevented it.  But Alma had left the room for a moment, and she tacitly indulged this sense of injury in her behalf.

“Please say good-night to Miss Leighton for me,” Beaton continued.  He bowed to Miss Woodburn, “Goodnight, Miss Woodburn,” and to her father, bluntly, “Goodnight.”

“Good-night, sir,” said the Colonel, with a sort of severe suavity.

“Oh, isn’t he choming!” Miss Woodburn whispered to Mrs. Leighton when Beaton left the room.

Alma spoke to him in the hall without.  “You knew that was my design, Mr. Beaton.  Why did you bring it?”

“Why?” He looked at her in gloomy hesitation.

Then he said:  “You know why.  I wished to talk it over with you, to serve you, please you, get back your good opinion.  But I’ve done neither the one nor the other; I’ve made a mess of the whole thing.”

Alma interrupted him.  “Has it been accepted?”

“It will be accepted, if you will let it.”

“Let it?” she laughed.  “I shall be delighted.”  She saw him swayed a little toward her.  “It’s a matter of business, isn’t it?”

“Purely.  Good-night.”

When Alma returned to the room, Colonel Woodburn was saying to Mrs. Leighton:  “I do not contend that it is impossible, madam, but it is very difficult in a thoroughly commercialized society, like yours, to have the feelings of a gentleman.  How can a business man, whose prosperity, whose earthly salvation, necessarily lies in the adversity of some one else, be delicate and chivalrous, or even honest?  If we could have had time to perfect our system at the South, to eliminate what was evil and develop what was good in it, we should have had a perfect system.  But the virus of commercialism was in us, too; it forbade us to make the best of a divine institution, and tempted us to make the worst.  Now the curse is on the whole country; the dollar is the measure of every value, the stamp of every success.  What does not sell is a failure; and what sells succeeds.”

“The hobby is oat, mah deah,” said Miss Woodburn, in an audible aside to Alma.

“Were you speaking of me, Colonel Woodburn?” Alma asked.

“Surely not, my dear young lady.”

“But he’s been saying that awtusts are just as greedy aboat money as anybody,” said his daughter.

“The law of commercialism is on everything in a commercial society,” the Colonel explained, softening the tone in which his convictions were presented.  “The final reward of art is money, and not the pleasure of creating.”

“Perhaps they would be willing to take it all oat in that if othah people would let them pay their bills in the pleasure of creating,” his daughter teased.