"Yes; if you choose to put it that way."
"Then let me tell you that however intimate you become with any man, you are not admitted to his social circle until he has presented you to his wife or sisters, and has invited you to his home. Every woman knows that, and I supposed every man did."
"My ignorance is perhaps the best evidence of how crude I really am," Cosden said soberly.
"Don't say crude," Edith protested considerately; "say rather that your social life has been undeveloped. Until this new desire for a home came to you the necessity of considering that side had not appealed, and when you once decided to make the grand plunge the only way you knew how to go at it was as if you were selecting a partner in your business. Perhaps, as you say, the same rules ought to apply, but I assure you they don't. And that is just where you stand now."
"Then I will learn the rules which do apply," he asserted with determination. "But why, if this is so all-important, have you yourself so little use for society?"
"It is a very different matter, my friend, to make light of something which you have and something which you lack. I may despise society, but if it was society that despised me you'd see me starting a campaign in New York that would make a football game look like a funeral procession."
Cosden regarded his animated companion for some moments in silence, but any one who knew him would have recognized that his mind had seized upon the germ of a new idea which pleased him, but which he was considering critically for the moment.
"Look here," he said suddenly. "It doesn't take me long to make up my mind. Why couldn't I persuade you to start a campaign like that for me—for us—in Boston?"
The abruptness of the suggestion, and the complete change from the subdued and humiliated seeker after light back to the dominating man of affairs who forces the solution of his dilemma, took even the astute Edith by surprise.
"Am I by any chance to consider that as an offer of marriage?" she demanded.