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"Owen says he's going at twelve."
"Well, that doesn't matter. Some one will take me home. Are you having a good time?"
"Fine. Oh, let me tell you. I stepped on a lady's dress over there, last dance. She was terribly
angry. She gave me such a look."
"Well, never mind, honey. She won't hurt you. Where are you going now?"
Aileen always maintained a most guardian-like attitude toward her sister.
"I want to find Callum. He has to dance with me next time. I know what he's trying to do. He's
trying to get away from me. But he won't."
Aileen smiled. Norah looked very sweet. And she was so bright. What would she think of her if
she knew? She turned back, and her fourth partner sought her. She began talking gayly, for she
felt that she had to make a show of composure; but all the while there was ringing in her ears
that definite question of his, "You like me, don't you?" and her later uncertain but not less
truthful answer, "Yes, of course I do."
Chapter XIX
The growth of a passion is a very peculiar thing. In highly organized intellectual and artistic
types it is so often apt to begin with keen appreciation of certain qualities, modified by many,
many mental reservations. The egoist, the intellectual, gives but little of himself and asks much.
Nevertheless, the lover of life, male or female, finding himself or herself in sympathetic accord
with such a nature, is apt to gain much.
Cowperwood was innately and primarily an egoist and intellectual, though blended strongly
therewith, was a humane and democratic spirit. We think of egoism and intellectualism as
closely confined to the arts. Finance is an art. And it presents the operations of the subtlest of
the intellectuals and of the egoists. Cowperwood was a financier. Instead of dwelling on the
works of nature, its beauty and subtlety, to his material disadvantage, he found a happy mean,
owing to the swiftness of his intellectual operations, whereby he could, intellectually and
emotionally, rejoice in the beauty of life without interfering with his perpetual material and
financial calculations. And when it came to women and morals, which involved so much relating
to beauty, happiness, a sense of distinction and variety in living, he was but now beginning to
suspect for himself at least that apart from maintaining organized society in its present form
there was no basis for this one-life, one-love idea. How had it come about that so many people
agreed on this single point, that it was good and necessary to marry one woman and cleave to
her until death? He did not know. It was not for him to bother about the subtleties of evolution,
which even then was being noised abroad, or to ferret out the curiosities of history in connection
with this matter. He had no time. Suffice it that the vagaries of temperament and conditions with
which he came into immediate contact proved to him that there was great dissatisfaction with
that idea. People did not cleave to each other until death; and in thousands of cases where they
did, they did not want to. Quickness of mind, subtlety of idea, fortuitousness of opportunity,
made it possible for some people to right their matrimonial and social infelicities; whereas for
others, because of dullness of wit, thickness of comprehension, poverty, and lack of charm,
there was no escape from the slough of their despond. They were compelled by some devilish
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