But she was searching for confirmation of her fear of some kind of trap. “You really mean that you wish to free me?” she said.
“I mean precisely what I say,” replied I. “Freedom and the cash are yours for the asking. But you must ask, my dear. I’ll not have any more of your favorite comedy of making yourself out a martyr.”
“You don’t know how you hurt me,” cried she. “But you always have hurt me—always. I know—” very gently—“that you didn’t mean to, but you haven’t understood.”
“I did my best,” said I, with the pleasant smile of which she was so intolerant. “But what can be expected of a plain, coarse materialist of a business man?”
“Yet you are generous in many ways,” mused she. “It’s simply that you can’t understand me.”
“Perhaps it’s you that don’t understand me,” said I.
“What do you mean?” inquired she.
“Oh, nothing,” I replied carelessly. How hope to make a vain woman, obsessed of the notion that she has a profound and mysterious soul when she simply has a fog-bank—how hope to make her see the truth about herself? “It isn’t worth explaining. Only—when you are free and you find some one who appreciates and sympathizes with that soul of yours, be careful to pay him well, and to keep on paying. You can always be flattered and fooled, if you pay for it. But if you don’t pay— Look out. You may hear the truth.”
“What a cynic you are!” she cried. “Thank God, I haven’t your low views of life.”
“Keep your views, by all means,” said I. “But don’t forget my advice. You are lovely. You are charming. You dress beautifully and have good taste. But it’s the money, my dear, that causes the excitement about those charms and graces. Hold on to your principal, and spend your income freely but judiciously.”