"Do you suppose I don't know that?" said she with the irritation of one faced by a hateful fact.
"Still--I don't see what to do."
Norman, biting his lip and fuming and observing her with jealous eyes, said in the best voice he could command, "How long have you been in love with him?"
"Did I say I was in love?" mocked she.
"You didn't say you weren't. Who is he?"
"If you'll stay on about half an hour or so, you'll see him. No--you can't. I've got to get dressed before I let him up. He has very strict ideas--where I'm concerned."
"Then why did you let ME come up?" Norman said, with a penetrating glance.
She lowered her gaze and a faint flush stole into her cheeks. Was it confession of the purpose he suspected?
Or, was it merely embarrassment?
"I heard of a case once," continued Norman, his gaze significantly direct, "the case of a girl who was in love with a poor young fellow. She wanted money --luxury. Also, she wanted the poor young fellow."
The color flamed into the girl's face, then left it pale.
Her white fingers fluttered with nervous grace into her masses of hair and back to her lap again, to rest there in timid quiet.
"She knew another man," pursued Norman, "one who was able to give her what she wanted in the way of comfort. So, she decided to make an arrangement with the man, and keep it hidden from her lover--and in that way get along pleasantly until her lover was in better circumstances ."
Her gaze was upon her hands, listless in her lap. He felt that he had spoken her unspoken, probably unformed thoughts. Yes, unformed. Men and women, especially women, habitually pursued these unacknowledged and--even unformed purposes, in their conflicts of the desire to get what they wanted and their desire to appear well to themselves.
"What would you think of an arrangement like that?" asked he, determined to draw her secret heart into the open where he could see, where she could see.
She lifted frank, guileless eyes to his. "I suppose the girl was trying to do the best she could."
"What do you think of a girl who'd do that?"
"I don't judge anybody--any more. I've found out that this world isn't at all as I thought--as I was taught."
"Would YOU do it?"
She smiled faintly. "No," she replied uncertainly.
Then she restored his wavering belief in her essential honesty and truthfulness by adding: "That is to say, I don't think I would."
She busied herself with her hair, feeling it to see whether it was not yet dry, spreading it out. He looked at her unseeingly. At last she said: "You must go.
I've got to get dressed."
"Yes--I must be going," said he absently, rising and reaching for his hat on the center table.
She stood up, put out her hand. "I'm glad you came."
"Thank you," said he, still in the same abstraction.
He shook hands with her, moved hesitatingly toward the door. With his hand on the knob he turned and glanced keenly at her. He surprised in her face a look of mystery--of seriousness, of sadness--was there anxiety in it, also? And then he saw a certain elusive reminder of her father--and it brought to him with curious force the memory of how she had been brought up, of what must be hers by inheritance and by training--she, the daughter of a great and simple and noble man--"You'll come again?" she said, and there was the note in her voice that made his nerves grow tense and vibrate.
But he seemed not to have heard her question. Still at the unopened door, he folded his arms upon his chest and said, speaking rapidly yet with the deliberation of one who has thought out his words in advance:
"I don't know what kind of girl you are. I never have known. I've never wanted to know. If you told me you were--what is called good, I'd doubt it. If you told me you weren't, I'd want to kill you and myself.
They say there's a fatal woman for every man and a fatal man for every woman. I always laughed at the idea--until you. I don't know what to make of myself."
She suddenly laid her finger on her lips. It irritated him, to discover that, as he talked, speaking the things that came from the very depths of his soul, she had been giving him only part of her attention, had been listening for a step on the stairs. He was hearing the ascending step now. He frowned. "Can't you send him away?" he asked.
"I must," said she in a low tone. "It wouldn't do for him to know you were here. He has strict ideas--and is terribly jealous."
A few seconds of silence, then a knock on the other side of the door.
"Who's there?" she called.
