"Besides," she continued, "the money is mine and if I choose to spend it this way, I really don't see why I should allow you to stop me." In spite of her bravado, she knew if he eame back with any sort of a flat ultimatum, she would yield.
Dudley was troubled and uncertain what to do. He had come down here eager to see her and to enjoy a tranquil evening and night by the Sound, and it seemed to him that he had come upon a crisis in their relations together. Here in this elaborate "cottage," in this environment of ease and wealth with the Hodges and Rao-Singh was the old world in which Carmelita had been brought up, to which she responded as a rose responds to the warmth and lazy sun of a hothouse. And back there in that scorching Greenwich Village apartment was the new world to which he had brought her, where she had learned to sacrifice the old world for her love. He hoped to take her soon from this new world of discomforts to a still newer world that would be her old world somewhat expurgated—comforts and luxuries but sans Lucys and Rao-Singhs. But now she wanted to slide back and he feared that in doing so she would slip away from him.
Luxury never seems so important as when we have had to abandon it for a time. He himself even now could feel the allure of it. He
