you to know
what'd become of me."

"Yes, and have you on my mind."

"I hoped I'd be takin' myself off your mind."

"If you want to take yourself off my mind there's a perfectly simple
means of doing it."

"I'll do anything--but take money."

"And taking money is the only thing I ask of you."

"I can't. It'd--it'd--shame me."

"Shame you? What nonsense!"

She reflected fast. "There's two ways a woman can take money from a
man. The man may love her and marry her; or perhaps he don't marry
her, but loves her just the same. Then she can take it; but when----"

"When she only renders him a--a great service----"

"Ah, but that's just what I didn't do. You said you wanted me to send
you to the devil--and now you ain't a-goin' to go."

He grew excited. "But, good Lord, girl, you don't expect me to go to
the devil just to keep my word to you."

"I don't want you to do anything just to keep your word to me," she
returned, fiercely. "I only want you to let me get away."

He came down the remaining step, beginning to pace back and forth as
he always did when approaching the condition he called "going off the
hooks." Letty found him a marvelous figure in his scarlet robe, and
with his mass of diabolic black hair.

"Yes, and if I let you get away, where would you get away _to_?"

"Oh, I'll find a place."

"A place in jail as a vagrant, as I said the other day."

"I'd rather be in jail," she flung back at him, "than stay where I'm
not wanted."

"That's not the question."

"It's the biggest question of all for me. It'd be the biggest for you
too if you were in my place." She stretched out her hands to him. "Oh,
please show me how to work the door, and let me go."

He flared as he was in the habit of flaring whenever he was opposed.
"You can go when we've settled the question of what you'll have to
live on."

"I'll have myself to live on--just as I had before I met you in the
Park."

"Nothing is the same for you or for me as before I met you in the
Park."

"No, but we want to make it the same, don't we? You can't--can't marry
the other girl till it is."

"I can't marry the other girl till I know you're taken care of."

"Money wouldn't take care of me. That's where you're makin' your
mistake. You rich people think that money will do anything. So it will
for you; but it don't mean so awful much to me." Her eyes, her lips,
her hands besought him together. "Think now! What would I do with
money if I had it