? It ain't as if I was a lady. A lady has ways of
doin' nothin' and livin' all the same; but a girl like me don't know
anything about them. I'd go crazy if I didn't work--or I'd die--or I'd
do somethin' worse."

It was because his nerves were on edge that he cried out: "I don't
care a button what you do. I'm thinking of myself."

She betrayed the sharpness of the wound only by a deepening of the
damask flush. "I'm thinkin' of you, too. Wouldn't you rather have
everything come right again--so that you could marry the other
girl--and know that I'd done it for you _free_--and not that you'd
just bought me off?"

"You mean, wouldn't I rather that all the generosity should be on your
side----"

"I don't care anything about generosity. I wouldn't be doin' it for
that. It'd be because----"

He flung out his arms. "Well--why?"

"Because I'd like to do something _for_ you----"

"Do something for me by making me a cad." He was beside himself.
"That's what it would come to. That's what you're playing for. I
should be a cad. You dress yourself up again in this ridiculous
rig----"

"It's not a ridic'lous rig. It's my own clothes----"

"Your own clothes _now_ are--are what I saw you in when I came home
last evening. You can't go back to that thing. We can't go back in any
way." He seemed to make a discovery. "It's no use trying to be what we
were in the Park, because we can't be. Whatever we do must be in the
way of--of going on to something else."

"Well, that'd be something else, if you'd just let me go, and do the
desertion stunt you talked to me about----"

"I'll not let you do it unless I pay you for it."

"But it'd be payin' me for it if--if you'd just let me do it. Don't
you see I _want_ to?"

"I can see that you want to keep me in your debt. I can see that I'd
never have another easy moment in my life. Whatever I did, and whoever
I married, I should have to owe it to _you_."

"Well, couldn't you--when I owe so much to you?"

"There you go! What do you owe to me? Nothing but getting you into an
infernal scrape----"

"Oh, no! It's not been that at all. You'd have to be me to understand
what it _has_ been. It'll be something to think of all the rest of my
life--whatever I do."

"Yes, and I know how you'll think of it."

"Oh, no, you don't. You couldn't. It's nothin' to you to come into
this beautiful house and see its lovely kind of life; but for me----"

"Oh, don't throw that sort of thing at me," he f