"But you are begging the question!" said Rufus a little impatiently.
"And you have granted it."
"I haven't!" said Rufus. "I don't see it. I don't see the stumbling or the lowering. I should not feel myself lowered by marrying a fine woman, and I hope she would not feel her own self-respect injured by marrying me."
"You will not stand so high upon her money-bags as upon your own feet."
"Why not have the advantage of both?"
"You cannot. People always sit down upon money-bags. The only exception is in the case of money-bags they have filled themselves."
Rufus looked at Winthrop's book for three minutes in silence.
"Well, why not then take at once the ease, for which the alternative is a long striving?"
"If you can. But the long striving is not the whole of the alternative; with that you lose the fruits of the striving — all that makes ease worth having."
"But I should not relinquish them," said Rufus. "I shall not sit down upon my money-bags."