"
His eyes dropped and a look of abject shame made his face
pitiable. "Good Heavens," he muttered.
"How low we are!"
"We've been doing the best we could," said she simply.
"Isn't there any decency anywhere in you?" he flashed out,
eagerly seizing the chance to forget his own shame in
contemplating her greater degradation.
She looked out of the window. There was something terrible in
the calmness of her profile. She finally said in an even,
pensive voice:
"You have been intimate with a great many women, Rod. But you
have never got acquainted with a single one."
He laughed good-humoredly. "Oh, yes, I have. I've learned
that `every woman is at heart a rake,' as Mr. Jingle Pope says."
She looked at him again, her face now curiously lighted by her
slow faint smile. "Perhaps they showed you only what they
thought you'd be able to appreciate," she suggested.
He took this as evidence of her being jealous of him. "Tell
me, Susan, did you leave me--in Forty-fourth Street--because
you thought or heard I wasn't true to you?"
"What did Drumley tell you?"
"I asked him, as you said in your note. He told me he knew no
reason."
So Drumley had decided it was best Rod should not know why she
left. Well, perhaps--probably--Drumley was right. But there
was no reason why he shouldn't know the truth now. "I left,"
said she, "because I saw we were bad for each other.
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