“I wonder whether you can rise to her,” she said. “If I were you, I should try. You will be happier—far happier than if you attempt to use her for your own ends, as a contributor to your comfort and an auxiliary to your career. I was afraid—I confess it—that you had married an aspiring, simpering and empty-headed provincial like that Mrs. George Hutchins' whom I met once, and who would sell her soul to be at my table. Well, you escaped that, and you may thank God for it. You've got a chance, think it over.
“A chance!” I repeated, though I gathered something of her meaning.
“Think it over, said Nancy again. And she smiled.
“But—do you want me to bury myself in domesticity?” I demanded, without grasping the significance of my words.
“You'll find her reasonable, I think. You've got a chance now, Hugh. Don't spoil it.”
She turned to Leonard Dickinson, who sat on her other side....
When we got home I tried to conceal my anxiety as to Maude's impressions of the evening. I lit a cigarette, and remarked that the dinner had been a success.
“Do you know what I've been wondering all evening?” Maude asked. “Why you didn't marry Nancy instead of me.”
“Well,” I replied, “it just didn't come off. And Nancy was telling me at dinner how fortunate I was to have married you.”
Maude passed this.