Mr. Jones had an inspiration and resumed his seat. “Look here!” he said. “You say you play a square game, that you will live up to your contract with me; and marriage is a partnership, by God! Well—if you go setting up for yourself, you injure my credit. I’m in a lot of things where credit is everything. Money (actual gold and silver) is not so plentiful as you think, and the greatest coward on earth. If there should be the slightest suspicion that I was unsound —”
“Why should there be? You will continue to live here in the same style, and I shall keep my rooms, and go about with you once or twice a week—even wear some of your jewels. What more could you ask?”
“What more?” Jones was purple again. “This: I didn’t marry to be made a laughing-stock of. Everybody’ll say I’m mean —”
“Not if you set me up. And you can get your good friend, The Mart, to say that I am ambitious to set a new style in fads —”
“There are some statements that no fool will swallow—let alone sharp business men in the City. Fad, indeed—when you will be standing on your feet all day in a milliner shop—unless—” hopefully—“you merely mean to put your name over the door to draw customers, and pocket the proceeds. That would be bad enough—but —”
“By no means. What possible satisfaction could I get out of making other people do what I want to do myself? You might as well ask an author if he would be content to let some one else write his books so long as he had his name on the title page and pocketed the profits. The joy of succeeding must lie in the effort, in knowing that you are doing something that no one else can do in quite the same way. I can be an artist even in hats, and I propose to be one.”
“And if I refuse you the capital?”
“Bridgit will lend it to me.”
“I am to be blackmailed, so!”
“What is blackmail?”