"Then what do you mean?"
"The courts would make it a case of desertion, if you force me to say that," answered Halsey. "Now, I don't want to live on this way for ever! I'm a young man, and my career's ahead of me! I've got to choose regarding my life before long! And I'm going to choose. I'm not going to let things run on in this way any further."
"That's what my father always said! Your career; your life! Where does your wife come in?"
"You come in precisely where you say you want to come in, Grace. We get what we earn in this world. If you leave me and take up a life which I can't share, if you leave my house and don't care for what I can give you—why there's not much left to talk about as to where you come in. You come in here. I belong over there."
"You're selfish! All men are, I think."
"I'm not going to argue about that in the least, Grace, except to say that it's the Rawn half of you that said that. The Rawn half of you can't see anything but its own part of the world. It wasn't the Rawn half of you that I married. You were different, then. You're not much like your mother, Grace! And I married the part of you that was like your mother. She was a good woman, and a good wife."
"You must not speak of her!"
"Oh, yes, I must, and I shall when I like. It's all in evidence. There's the record." He nodded toward the two dim figures at the other end of the gallery. "She's very beautiful, yes, very beautiful!" His eyes lingered on the figure of Virginia Rawn, faintly outlined, cool in satin and laces.
"She'd like to hear you say that!" sneered his wife.
"I perceive, my dear, that you two love each other very much. But as I was saying, you don't seem to me, Grace, to be much like your own mother—you're more like your stepmother, over there, in some ways. Your mother didn't change. She made good—if you'll let me use some more factory slang—on the old ways, on her own old lines. That's what I call class, breeding, blood, if you like—just plain North American sincerity and simplicity. She didn't pretend, she didn't try to climb where she knew she couldn't go. That's what I call blood!"