“Yes, I think I’d like New York,” continued she, all unsuspicious.  “I don’t care much for politics.  I hate to think of a man of your abilities at the mercy of the mob.  In New York you could make a really great career.”

“Get rich—­be right in the social swim—­and you too,” suggested he.

“It certainly is very satisfactory to feel one is of the best people.  And I’m sure you’d not care to have me mix up with all sorts, as politicians’ wives have to do.”

He laughed at her—­the loud, coarse Josh Craig outburst.  “You’re stark mad on the subject of class distinctions, aren’t you?” said he.  “You’ll learn some day to look on that sort of thing as you would on an attempt to shovel highways and set up sign-posts in the open sea.  Your kind of people are like the children that build forts out of sand at the seashore.  Along comes a wave and washes it all away....You’d be willing for me to abandon my career and become a rich nonentity in New York?”

His tone was distinctly offensive.  “I don’t look at it in that way,” said she coldly.  “Really, I care nothing about it.”  And she resumed the reading of her letter.

“Do you expect me to believe,” demanded he, excited and angry—­“do you expect me to believe you’ve not given the subject of our future a thought?”

She continued reading.  Such a question in such a tone called for the rebuke of an ignoring silence.  Also, deep down in her nature, down where the rock foundations of courage should have been but were not, there had begun an ominous trembling.

“You know what my salary is?”

“You just mentioned it.”

“You know it’s to be only five hundred dollars a year more after January?”

“I knew the Cabinet people got eight thousand.”  She was gazing dreamily out toward the purple horizon, seemed as far as its mountains from worldliness.

“Hadn’t you thought out how we were to live on that sum?  You are aware I’ve practically nothing but my salary.”

“I suppose I ought to think of those things—­ought to have thought of them,” replied she with a vague, faint smile.  “But really—­ well, we’ve been brought up rather carelessly—­I suppose some people would call it badly—­and—­”

“You take me for a fool, don’t you?” he interrupted roughly.

She elevated her eyebrows.

“I wish I had a quarter for every row between your people and your grandmother on the subject of money.  I wish I had a dollar for every row you and she have had about it.”

He again vented his boisterous laugh; her nerves had not been so rasped since her wedding day.  “Come, Margaret,” he went on, “I know you’ve been brought up differently from me.  I know I seem vulgar to you in many ways.  But because I show you I appreciate those differences, don’t imagine I’m an utter ass.  And I certainly should be if I didn’t know that your people are human beings.”

She looked guilty as well as angry now.  She felt she had gone just the one short step too far in her aristocratic assumptions.