"The things we can't lose?" said Stowe; "that means me, I suppose?"
"Oh, Alice, come back to earth," Persis urged, with all her might. "Think how tired you'll get of living in a dark little pigeonhole away up in the air, with no neighbors but working-people. And when your pretty gowns are worn out, and you lose your pretty looks and your pretty figure and your fresh color—for those are expensive luxuries—and when you see that your husband is growing disappointed in you because the harder you work for him the homelier and duller you become—that's a woman's fate, Alice: to alienate a man by the very sacrifices she makes to bind him closer; and when—"
"Oh, don't tell me any more whens," Alice whimpered. "What do I care? I want Stowe. He needs me. We are unhappy away from each other."
Persis shook her head like a sibyl. "Be careful that you don't find yourselves more unhappy together. For some day you'll grow bitter. You'll remember what you gave up. You'll begin to remind him of it—to nag—and nag—oh, the unspeakable vulgarity of it! And then you'll ruin Stowe's career—just as it's beginning. The Senator doesn't want a secretary with a wife. You'll always be in the way. Stowe will have to be leaving you all the time or fretting over you. You'll hamper his usefulness, and check his career, and grind him down to poverty, break his spirit."
"Oh, I don't want to do that!" Alice wept. "I mustn't do that!"
"Then wait—wait!" Persis pleaded. "Marriage is risky enough when there is no worry about money. But when the bills come in at the door love flies out at the window."
Stowe seized Alice's hands with ardor. "Don't listen to her, Alice."
"But I'm frightened now," Alice wailed. "It's for your sake, Stowe. We mustn't—not yet. And now may I please go home where I can cry my eyes out."
Persis in triumph called the address to the chauffeur. Stowe Webb, in the depths of dejection, left the cab and stared after it with eyes of bitter reproach.
Alice's tears were standing out like orient pearls impaled on eyelashes as she said good-by to Persis at her own curb.