Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/137

Rh The manner in which these last words reached her had clearly to do with her finally leaving her place, watching him meanwhile as he wiped his glass. 'Yes—there we are. He did tell me,' she went on, 'that you had told him where you had been and that you could pick up nothing'

'Against you?' he broke in. 'Not a beggarly word.'

'And you tried hard?'

'I worked like a nigger. It was no use.'

'But say you had succeeded—what,' she asked, 'was your idea?'

'Why, not to have had the thing any longer between us.'

He brought this out with such simplicity that she stared. 'But if it had been?'

'Yes?'—the way she hung fire made him eager.

'Well—something you would have loathed.'

'Is it?'—he almost sprang at her. 'For pity's sake, what is it?' he broke out in a key that now filled the room supremely with the strange soreness of his yearning for his justification.

She kept him waiting, after she had taken this in, but another instant. 'You would rather, you say, have had it from him'

'But I must take it as I can get it? Oh, anyhow!' he fairly panted.

'Then with a condition.'

It threw him back into a wail that was positively droll. 'Another?'

'This one,' she dimly smiled, 'is comparatively easy. You must promise me with the last solemnity'

'Yes!'

'On the sacred honour of a gentleman'

'Yes!'

'To repeat to no one whatever what you now have from me.'

Thus completely expressed, the condition checked him but a moment. 'Very well!'