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 to it!" he bid her; and, to please him, she sipped and thought of the last time she had drunk with him in his room and he had tried to detain her.

"I'm crazy about you, Jo," he made love to her across the table in the same words as on that night; and the proposal, which he put to her, seemed to her the same as on that night. To be sure, his wife, Adele, now was dead and therefore he might, without breaking any law, buy a license and marry Joan Royle before a magistrate; but otherwise the situation was the same as when he had asked her to stay in his room; he was the same; he wanted her with the identical desire.

"I got the swellest suite in the shed for us!" he told her with a confiding exultation which almost made her cry again. "Thirty a day; but what's thirty a day to me?" he asked, as though his fortune was become incredible to himself. It reminded her of when she had met him, for the first time since they were children, and he had said, "D'you know who that bell-boy was? D'you know who I was? I'm Ketlar of the Echo."

He was offering her his best and himself at his best; yes, at his very best. That was what she had felt when she had sat, all a-throb, in the rest room; that was why she had come out to him to tell him, honestly: "Ket, I can't marry you."

"Why not?" he demanded. "What've you done?"

"I can't, Ket."

"You mean you don't even want to marry me?"

"We shouldn't marry, Ket."

"Huh? What the devil are we goin' to do?"

"We can go on, Ket—"

"Tow?"

"Like we've been—"

"For Hell's sake, the friend stuff! That's what you're tryin' to say? That's your idea? Is it? Is it?"