"Yes, but--"
"That's enough for me. I don't want to hear anything more until you're my wife. After that you'll have to tell me--and if there's any trouble remaining to be straightened out then, why, it'll be my natural job as a husband to fix it up for you. Till then I won't listen to any more of your confidences that have nothing whatever to do with the fact that I love you and believe in you and want to make you happy."
"But don't you understand that a girl who would steal and lie in order to get into society--"
"Oh, everybody's got to be foolish about something or other. You'll get over this social craze. The more you see of it the more sure your cure. Now don't mistake me; I'm not for an instant implying that some of the finest people that ever walked God's green earth don't figure in what we call Society; and there are more of them on this little island, perhaps, than anywhere else in America; and I'd be the last to cry them down or pretend I'm not glad and proud of their acquaintance and friendship. The trouble is, they can't in the nature of things keep up their social order without attracting a cloud of parasites, snobs, and toadies--and that's what makes me sick of the whole social game as practised to-day."
"And you can't understand that I am precisely what you've described--a parasite!"
"You couldn't be if you wanted to. Maybe you think you could, but you're wrong; you haven't got it in you."
Against such infatuation candour was powerless. She retreated to the last ditch. "But you told me your father's heart was set on your marrying a society woman!"
"Well, what of that? You don't suppose I think any of them have got anything on you, do you? Besides, dad isn't altogether an old idiot, and if the kind of society woman he wants me to marry wouldn't look at me, and if my happiness is at stake . . . Well, even if he did want to ruin my life by hitching me up in double harness to a clothes-horse, I wouldn't let him!"
"But if I want--"
"There isn't anything you want that I can't get you. If you like this sort of thing, you shall have it. And don't run away with the idea that I'm not strong for society myself--the right sort."