"Would you marry a woman because she was a good housekeeper?"
"That would be one of the requirements," said Charlton. "I've sense enough to know that, no matter how much I liked a woman before marriage, it couldn't last long if she were incompetent. She'd irritate me every moment in the day. I'd lie awake of nights despising her. And how she would hate me!"
"I can't imagine you a husband," laughed Jane.
"That doesn't speak well for your imagination," rejoined Charlton. "I have perfect health—which means that I have a perfect disposition, for only people with deranged interiors are sour and snappy and moody. And I am sympathetic and understanding. I appreciate that women are rottenly brought up and have everything to learn—everything that's worth while if one is to live comfortably and growingly. So, I shouldn't expect much at the outset beyond a desire to improve and a capacity to improve. Yes, I've about all the virtues for a model husband—a companionable, helpful mate for a woman who wants to be more of a person every day she lives."
"No, thanks," said Jane, mockingly. "The advertisement reads well, but I don't care to invest."
"Oh, I looked you over long ago," said Charlton with a coolness that both amused and exasperated her. "You wouldn't do at all. You are very attractive to look at and to talk with. Your money would be useful to some plans I've got for some big sanatoriums along the line of Schulze's up at Saint Christopher. But—-" He shook his head, smiling at her through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
"Go on," urged Jane. "What's wrong with me?"
"You've been miseducated too far and too deeply. You KNOW too much that isn't so. You've got the upper class American woman habit of thinking about yourself all the time. You are an indifferent housekeeper, and you think you are good at it. You don't know the practical side of life—cooking, sewing, house furnishing, marketing. You're ambitious for a show career—the sort Davy Hull—excuse me, Governor David Hull—is making so noisily. There's just the man for you. You ought to marry. Marry Hull."
Jane was furiously angry. She did not dare show it; Charlton would merely laugh and walk away, and perhaps refuse to be friends with her. It exasperated her to the core, the narrow limitations of the power of money. She could, through the power of her money, do exactly as she pleased to and with everybody except the only kind of people she cared about dominating; these she was apparently the less potent with because of her money. It seemed to put them on their mettle and on their guard.
She swallowed her anger. "Yes, I've got to get married," said she. "And I don't know what to do about it."