Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/331

 There's about three million girls in this town, why pick on me?"

He studies me for a minute without saying a word and then that hurt look slowly leaves his eyes—for which I am thankful, as it's commencing to hurt me too. When he speaks again, his face is hard as the side of Pike's Peak.

"I see," he says slowly. "All women are alike. No sportsmanship, no sense of fair play! I am condemned utterly without a chance to speak a word in my defence. But what interests me more is how a woman with your knowledge of life and the world can be so narrow as to think all chorus men, or let us say, a man temporarily in the chorus, can be degraded by the mere position, as you intimate."

"I don't wish to argue with you," I says. "I merely wish to leave you. Good night!"

With that I turned on my heel—and nearly turned on my ankle, as Julius grabs my arm in a very manly grasp. Afterwards it was black and blue.

"For God's sake, Gladys, don't send me away!" he says, in a voice which sends a thrill all through me. "You represent perhaps the only sincere emotion I ever had in my life and if you go whatever chance I have of getting anywhere will go with you. I will be a total loss, as you've just called me. With you, I can make good. Maybe that's a confession of weakness