"Let me tell you something more," Cosden went on. "There is many a corporation right in the city of Boston that spends more money in lobbying at the State House than it does in producing its goods, yet the officers of those same corporations go around without having their best friends tell them they are 'branded with the ear-marks' of their business. They are just as commercial as I am, and some of them aren't nearly as careful to play the game straight. That is where I can't comprehend Monty's attitude. If a man observes the 'finer instincts' in his business, as I believe I do, why isn't the brand it marks him with a hall-mark of respectability in any society in which he wants to mingle?"
Edith had been very busy with her fancy-work, and she did not look up when Cosden appealed to her for an answer.
"Now you're getting nearer to what Mr. Huntington means," she said with decision. "You know your business world,—its customs and its standards, and as you have just explained they are not always consistent. The same is true of the social world, and that, as I understand it, Mr. Huntington knows better than you do. The social world has its customs and standards just the same, and in many cases they are equally inconsistent. You can't explain these inconsistencies in one any more than in the other; they simply exist. What you still have to do is to become familiar with them as you have with those in the business world."
"That is where the wife comes in,—that's what she's for," Cosden insisted. "That's the very reason I want to marry a woman who knows that end of the game. When I select a partner in my business I don't want him to handle my end, but rather some part of it which he can do better than I can. And the same thing ought to apply here."
"Perhaps it ought, Mr. Cosden, but that is just the point,—it doesn't; and the first thing Mr. Huntington would tell you is that the two don't mix. Here are two distinct worlds which touch each other very closely; the one admits the other to a certain extent, the other never admits the one."
"Then the wife won't do it?"
"Not alone. Many a wife has accomplished for her husband what he never could have gained for himself, but only when the man has permitted her to teach him how to leave his business behind him when he leaves his office. Business plays its part in the social world, but it is one of those polite amenities not to recognize the machinery which makes society possible."
Cosden moved uncomfortably in his chair. "I'm not a climber," he said. "I haven't any desire to force myself in where I'm not wanted; but here I am, a member of some of the best clubs in my own city, recognized in the business world, and acquainted with every one who is worth knowing. Until within twenty-four hours I supposed that I was as much a part of the social organization as I chose to be,—no more, no less. Now, the best friend I have in the world tells me point blank that the very thing I supposed was most to my credit is a bar across the path I have elected to take. I'm not ready yet to admit it. Monty says that I've lost something, but he's wrong: apparently the attributes he has in mind I never even possessed."
"Then the more reason to exert yourself until you do possess them."
"But if I lack them, why haven't I felt the lack before?" he appealed. "I'm thrown all the time with the very men on whom the social life of Boston rests."