I'll be adrift--gambling, drinking,
yawning about and going to pieces. A man's got to have
something to work for--and he can't work unless it seems to
him worth doing."
She was staring into the mirror, her elbows on the table, her
chin upon her interlaced fingers. It would be difficult to
say how much of his gentleness to her was due to her physical
charm for him, and how much to his respect for her mind and
her character. He himself would have said that his weakness
was altogether the result of the spell her physical charm
cast over him. But it is probable that the other element was
the stronger.
"You'll not be selfish, Susan?" urged he. "You'll give me a
square deal."
"Yes--I see that it does look selfish," said she. "A little
while ago I'd not have been able to see any deeper than the
looks of it. Freddie, there are some things no one has a
right to ask of another, and no one has a right to grant."
The ugliness of his character was becoming less easy to
control. This girl whom he had picked up, practically out of
the gutter, and had heaped generosities upon, was trying his
patience too far. But he said, rather amiably:
"Certainly I'm not asking any such thing of you in asking you
to become a respectable married woman, the wife of a rich man."
"Yes--you are, Freddie," replied she gently. "If I married
you, I'd be signing an agreement to lead your life, to give up
my own--an agreement to become a sort of woman I've no desire
to be and no interest in being; to give up trying to become
the only sort of woman I think is worth while.
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