you mean to tell me you’d marry a man simply because he happened to have a lot of money!”
“Perhaps not simply because he had a lot of money. But it certainly would be a factor, among other things. Certainly he would be preferable to a man who knocked me about the fields as if I were a bag of potatoes.”
“Oh, forgive me. But—listen, Paula—you know I'm—gosh! And there I am stuck in an architect’s office and it'll be years before I”
“Yes, but it'll probably be years before I meet the millions I require, too. So why bother? And even if I do, you and I can be just as good friends.”
“Oh, shut up. Don’t pull that ingénue stuff on me, please. Remember I’ve known you since you were ten years old.”
“And you know just how black my heart is, don’t you, what? You want, really, some nice hearty lass who can tell asparagus from peas when she sees ’em, and who'll offer to race you from here to the kitchen.”
“God forbid!”
Six months later Paula Arnold was married to Theodore A. Storm, a man of fifty, a friend of her father’s, head of so many companies, stockholder in so many banks, director of so many corporations that even old Aug Hempel seemed a recluse from business in comparison. She never called him Teddy. No one ever did. Theodore Storm was a large man—not exactly stout, perhaps, but flabby. His inches saved him from grossness. He had a large white serious
