Josh countered and returned magnificently:  “I remember her face perfectly,” said he.  “One shares one’s name with a great many people, so it’s unimportant.  But one’s face is one’s own.  I remember her face very well indeed—­and that gorgeous figure of hers.”

Grant was furious, thought Craig’s words the limit of impertinent free-spokenness.  “Well, what of it?” said he savagely.

“I like her,” replied Josh condescendingly.  “But she’s been badly brought up, and is full of foolish ideas, like all your women here.  But she’s a thoroughbred.”

“Then you like her?” observed Arkwright without enthusiasm.

“So-so.  Of course, she isn’t fit to be a wife, but for her type and as a type she’s splendid.”

Arkwright felt like kicking him and showed it.  “What a bounder you are at times, Josh,” he snapped.

Craig laughed and slapped him on the back.  “There you go again, with your absurd notions of delicacy.  Believe me, Grant, you don’t understand women.  They don’t like you delicate fellows.  They like a man—­like me—­a pawer of the ground—­a snorter—­a warhorse that cries ha-ha among the trumpets.”

“The worst thing about what you say,” replied Arkwright sourly, “is that it’s the truth.  I don’t say the women aren’t worthy of us, but I do say they’re not worthy of our opinion of them....  Well, I suppose you’re going to try to marry her”—­this with a vicious gleam which he felt safe in indulging openly before one so self-absorbed and so insensible to subtleties of feeling and manner.

“I think not,” said Craig judicially.  “She’d play hell with my politics.  It’s bad enough to have fights on every hand and all the time abroad.  It’d be intolerable to have one at home—­and I’ve got no time to train her to my uses and purposes.”

Usually Craig’s placid conviction that the universe existed for his special benefit and that anything therein was his for the mere formality of claiming it moved Arkwright to tolerant amusement at his lack of the sense of proportion and humor.  Occasionally it moved him to reluctant admiration—­this when some apparently absurd claim of his proved more or less valid.  Just now, in the matter of Margaret Severence, this universal overlordship filled him with rage, the more furious that he realized he could no more shake Josh’s conviction than he could make the Washington monument topple over into the Potomac by saying, “Be thou removed.”  He might explain all the obvious reasons why Margaret would never deign to condescend to him; Josh would dismiss them with a laugh at Arkwright’s folly.

He hid his rage as best he could, and said with some semblance of genial sarcasm:  “So all you’ve got to do is to ask her and she’s yours?”

Craig gave him a long, sharp, searching look.  “Old man,” he said earnestly, “do you want her?”

“I!” exclaimed Arkwright angrily, but with shifting eyes and with upper lip twitching guiltily.  Then, satirically:  “Oh, no; I’d not dare aspire to any woman you had condescended to smile upon.”