Page:Barbour--Peggy in the rain.djvu/256

 and interview you, and I refused. He—he said I must either go or leave"

"The damned brute! Who is he?"

"Never mind him, Gordon. He was right; I ought to have gone. But—I couldn't! My week was up to-morrow night and I didn't know where to go next. I was here nearly a month before I got work on the Bulletin. And then I was ill for three days and they let me go. After that I got a place on the Star-Courier. And I made good, only when he gave me that assignment to-night I couldn't take it. And after I got home things looked so sort of—of hopeless that I—I wrote to you." Her voice died away so that he barely caught her words at the last.

"You wrote to me, Peggy?" he exclaimed. "Where is the letter, dear?"

"I gave it to you before we left. Don't you remember?"

He searched his pocket and found it, a crumpled, smoke-saturated ball.

"I have it," he said. "May I read it?"

"Yes, after you leave me."

"I'm not going to leave you," he asserted firmly. She was silent for a moment. They were