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up my mind to it, I could have my own place. I won more today than I won at Omoana.”

“And you’ll probably gamble it away again,” she returned contemptuously. “Money got like that isn’t often kept. It’s only the money earned by hard work that’s much use.”

“Who says I can’t work hard?”

“We’re getting away from the point. It isn’t a question of money—that wouldn’t count much with me in marriage—but do you think I should be making a very brilliant match in marrying you?”

“I’m not good enough?”

“I don’t know about not being good enough, but you’ve been brought up with a different standard of life and education.”

“If you loved me, that wouldn’t matter.”

“I think it would make life together difficult.”

“Are you going to marry the boss after the divorce?” he asked fiercely.

“As far as I know, I’m not going to marry at all. Two men—men who have far more in the way of worldly possessions than you are ever likely to have, men more accustomed to the world in which I’ve been brought up—have asked me to marry them in the last six months. I refused them both.”

“Would either of them ask you again—after...this?”

“Yes, I think both of them would—if they thought there was any chance of my accepting them. At any rate, they would have sense enough to believe that I was innocent of what you seem to imagine is true.”

“You’ve told me that it is.”

“I’ve told you that Mrs. Holmes is bringing an action for divorce.”