"I don't know, Maria——"
"One hundred dollars a week to write about the baseball game! Fifty dollars a week to Maria Algarez. My God, what a country! I do not like that, Peter. Still, it does not matter so much. Maybe I am glad that you are rich. You can buy me a piano and I will show you that I know how to play Chopin. You would like that."
"That'll be fine," said Peter.
"Where was it that you learned so much about this baseball that they pay you $100 for the week?"
"I used to play myself at Harvard. At least I played one year. I pitched against Yale and shut 'em out. The next year I got fired because I couldn't learn French."
"But that is so easy, the French. I do not know what it is to shut Yale out."
"Of course it's easy for you. You lived there, you told me ever since you were five. Any foreigner ought to be able to speak French."
"But I am not. I am now the American, I know that. I am Mrs. Peter Neale."
"Oh," she said, and made a fearful grimace, "that you must never call me. It must be that I am still Maria Algarez. Mrs. Peter Neale I do not know. Maria Algarez she will not die. Oh no, Peter, you understand that?"
"It's all right with me," said Peter. "I'm just going to call you Maria any way."