'Perhaps that's ugly.' 'Please don't speak of the money; mine is yours.' 'That makes me seem all the dingier, I know,' said Gerald, half ruefully, yet still smiling at her.

'I do wish I could give it up, just to please you, but really I can't.

You must just shut your eyes and pretend I'm not a brute.' After this little encounter, which left its mark on Althea's heart, she felt that Gerald ought to be the more willing to yield in other things and to enter into her projects.

'Don't you think, dear,' she said to him a day or two after, when they were walking together, 'don't you think that you ought soon to be thinking of a seat in Parliament?
That will be such a large, worthy life for you.' Gerald, as they walked, was looking from right to left, happily, possessively, over the fields and woods.

He brought his attention to her suggestion with a little effort, and then he laughed.