"You're pretty poor, aren't you?"
His very forehead was drenched with red shame at such comment from her. She could see how she had hurt his pride, and she put on the solemnity he expected her to wear.
"Oh, don't misunderstand me, Harvey, I implore you! I love you all the more for being just your glorious self. You've paid me the greatest honor I ever had—or shall have. You asked me to be your wife, and you are willing to divide up your pitiful little income with me. You'd give it all to me. You'd run into debt till you smothered. But it wouldn't work out. Mother was right: 'People can do without love easier than without money.'"
"Not people with hearts like yours," he ventured at last to put in as a feeble objection.
"Oh, I'm afraid of this heart of mine," she answered. "If it had any sense it wouldn't have fallen in love with you—you of all men. I knew you weren't really terribly rich, but I didn't think you were so pitifully, cruelly poor."
The epithet reiterated stung him like a whip in the face. He protested impatiently:
"I'm not really poor. Army officers have many ways of saving expenses. I might not give you princely luxuries, Persis, but I'd make your life happy."
His resistance gave her something to fight, and her resentment at fate welcomed it.
"Me happy at an army post? With nothing but poker for you and gossip for me? No, thank you!"
She caught a twitch of anger in his brows, and she grew harsher: