"What do you mean by satisfactorily?" she asked, letting a moment or two lapse between his question and her answer.
"I mean everything arranged in your favor," he replied with a short laugh. "He is rather sure to do that, you know. He likes to do things with the grand air."
"Oh, no, Eugene, it is you who like to affect the grand air. With him it is natural."
He looked up at her quickly. "It sounds, it sounds," he said, "as if you might possibly be on the verge of a sirocco. Don't Dita, I implore you. I am off the key myself."
"Why?" she asked.
He lifted his shoulders. "Ah, that I do not know."
"I refused any alimony, Eugene," she said abruptly.
"What! Oh, Dita, you must not! Why, it is the height of folly! My dear child, it is quixotic to the verge of idiocy." All his moodiness had vanished. He was arguing her case fervently enough now. "You have had your head turned by the success you and Maud have enjoyed in this venture this winter, but that is purely ephemeral. You were a fad, a novelty. How long do such things last in New York? And here is Hepworth willing and anxious to endow you with houses and lands. Dita," and never had she heard him plead his love with such fervor, "Dita, you must not ruin your whole life by a blind whim. You must listen to advice. You must be guided by your friends in this matter.
"It is true, of course," he continued, "that I make a very large income, but I lay nothing by. It is impossible. I must keep up an appearance—the painter prince, and all that sort of thing. It is expected of me. It is a part of my stock in trade."
"Then you consider, 'Gene," her voice was calmly, reassuringly reasonable now, "you consider that fully to enjoy life we must both possess more than an ordinarily large income?"