"Are you?"
"No, for I have been eating blueberries. Have some?" She held out the hood to him.
He took a handful and ate them silently. "What about that problem?" he said when he had finished. "It's a little early for supper I think."
"That's just what I think. Mr. Williams, do you believe it to be very, very wrong to marry for money?" She blurted out her question without preliminary. "I mean," she went on, "if the man has no vices, and hasn't a disagreeable temper or anything like that. Don't you believe that in the long run a girl would be just as well content as if she had married a man without a penny? It would be awfully hard to endure grinding poverty. I shouldn't mind being moderately poor, and going without some things, but a hand to mouth existence always—oh dear me, no."
"That's your problem."
"Yes, that is it. I can't very well talk to Aunt Cam about it, for she is sure to be sentimental and quote things about the uses of sacrifice in developing character, and about dinners of herbs and stalled oxen and things. She couldn't understand how I should loathe to wash my own dishes three hundred and sixty-five times—no, three times three hundred and sixty-five times a year, and cook my own meals as often, besides never having any money for operas and theatres and clothes. I think it is pitiful to see a girl, who has been bright and pretty, looking faded and worn in her threadbare wedding finery which she has turned upside down and wrong side out after she has been married ten years. Do tell me what you think about it. As an entirely unprejudiced person, who can look at the matter and get a proper perspective. What is your honest opinion?"
"I think," said Mr. Williams, after a pause, "you should ask yourself: How would it be if the man were to lose his money, or were to become a hopeless invalid."
"Gracious!" exclaimed Gwen. "That never occurred to me. I am afraid I have been thinking only of making the best of life with the compensation of having all the pretty things I wanted, and of going to Europe, and having a good time generally. I could even talk about steel rails sometimes, under those circumstances. But with no money! Oh dear." She saw before her a picture of Cephas Mitchell in shabby clothes, earning perhaps a meagre salary sufficient to keep up only a small flat in a crowded city. She saw herself struggling to make both ends meet, turning, contriving, mending while he talked common-places. Or perhaps she might be tied to a peevish invalid who would exact attention to his every whim, and to whom she must devote her days till death did part. She sat for some time, chin in hand, her eyes fixed on the waves breaking over Charity Ledge. At last she drew a long breath. "I couldn't, I simply couldn't," she said. "I should be perfectly miserable. I am pretty sure he is not the man to stay down if he does get a tumble, still one never knows, and as for health, that is even more uncertain."
"And it is too serious a matter to take risks in? Yes, I think it is. I knew a girl once who married a man for his money. He promised to be a success in the world. She wasn't in love with him, but she knew the marriage would please her family, so she married him. They were happy for a year or two." He paused.
"And then?"