“Oh!”

The frigidity and dryness of the exclamation Littleton ascribed to Selma’s intuitive enmity to the vanities of life.

“You mustn’t pass judgment on them too hastily,” he said.  “New York is a wonderful place, and it’s likely to shock you before you learn to appreciate what is interesting and fine here.  I will tell you a secret, Selma.  Every one likes to make money.  Even clergymen feel it their duty to accept a call from the congregation which offers the best salary, and probing men of science do not hesitate to reap the harvest from a wonderful invention.  Yet it is the fashion with most of the people in this country who possess little to prate about the wickedness of money-getters and to think evil of the rich.  That proceeds chiefly from envy, and it is sheer cant.  The people of the United States are engaged in an eager struggle to advance themselves—­to gain individual distinction, comfort, success, and in New York to a greater extent than in any other place can the capable man or woman sell his or her wares to the best advantage—­be they what they may, stocks, merchandise, law, medicine, pictures.  The world pays well for the things it wants—­and the world is pretty just in the long run.  If it doesn’t like my designs, that will be because they’re not worth buying.  The great thing—­the difficult thing to guard against in the whirl of this great city, where we are all striving to get ahead—­is not to sell one’s self for money, not to sacrifice the thing worth doing for mere pecuniary advantage.  It’s the great temptation to some to do so, for only money can buy fine houses, and carriages and jewels—­yes, and in a certain sense, social preferment.  The problem is presented in a different form to every man.  Some can grow rich honestly, and some have to remain poor in order to be true to themselves.  We may have to remain poor, Selma mia.”  He spoke gayly, as though that prospect did not disturb him in the least.

“And we shall be just as good as the people who own these houses.”  She said it gravely, as if it were a declaration of principles, and at the same moment her gaze was caught and disturbed by a pair of blithe, fashionably dressed young women gliding by her with the quiet, unconscious grace of good-breeding.  She was inwardly aware, though she would never acknowledge it by word or sign, that such people troubled her.  More even than Mrs. Taylor had troubled her.  They were different from her and they tantalized her.

At the same moment her husband was saying in reply, “Just as good, but not necessarily any better.  No—­other things being equal—­not so good.  We mustn’t deceive ourselves with that piece of cant.  Some of them are frivolous enough, and dishonest enough, heaven knows, but so there are frivolous and dishonest people in every class.  But there are many more who endeavor to be good citizens—­are good citizens, our best citizens.  The possession of money gives them the opportunity to become arbiters of morals