"Where, if I may ask?"
"In business, and at my clubs."
"But not in their homes?" Edith pursued.
"No," Cosden admitted; "there has never been any reason to meet them there."
Edith folded her work deliberately and looked squarely at her companion.
"My friend," she said with decision, "'the time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things.' Some one must set you right. You have too much knowledge in other directions to be so childlike in this. If you still look upon me as confidential adviser, I'll appoint myself that one."
"I should be eternally grateful."
"Then don't be offended if I speak plainly. I believe that I understand the situation exactly: you have pursued the even tenor of your way all these years, following a definite plan, and accomplishing your set purpose. In the confidence of having accomplished it, you decide that the moment has arrived to exercise a side of your nature which up to that moment has scarcely interested you, and you try to put your new thought into execution as mechanically as you have carried through every other purpose which you have ever had. Your election to your clubs, no doubt, was the result of careful and business-like plans, laid down when your name was first proposed, and followed up with the same irreproachable persistency which would be applied to any other business undertaking."
"Of course," he acknowledged: "that is the only way to put anything through."
"So your clubs, which you have looked upon to certain extent as social achievements, have been only a part of your every-day business routine, after all?"