Under her direction he was presently driving north; then he turned
sharply east down a little hill, and came out on a low, flat pier. He put
out the motor's lights. They were only a few feet above the water, which
was as black as liquid jet, with flat silver and gold patches on it from
white and yellow lights. Opposite to them the lighthouse at the north end
of Blackwell's Island glowed like a hot coal. Then a great steamer
obscured it.

"Isn't this nice?" Mrs. Wayne asked, and he saw that she wanted her
discovery praised. He never lost the impression that she enjoyed
being praised.

Such a spot, within sight of half a dozen historic sites, was a
temptation to Mr. Lanley, and he would have unresistingly yielded to it
if Mrs. Wayne had not said:

"But we haven't said a word yet about our children."

"True," answered Mr. Lanley. His heart sank. It is not easy, he thought,
to explain to a person for whom you have just conceived a liking that her
son had aspired above his station. He tapped his long, middle finger on
the steering-wheel, just as at directors' meetings he tapped the table
before he spoke, and began, "In a society somewhat artificially formed as
ours is, Mrs. Wayne, it has always been my experience that--" Do what he
would, it kept turning into a speech, and the essence of the speech was
that while democracy did very well for men, a strictly aristocratic
system was the only thing possible for girls--one's own girls, of
course. In the dim light he could see that she had pushed all her hair
back from her brows. She was trying to follow him exactly, so exactly