For all your sneers and your mockery
you've always known I loved you the way a man loves a decent woman. I'm
a good many years older than you, but I'm head and shoulders above this
place and everybody in it, and you know that too. I slipped up once, but
that's no reason for not starting again. If you'll come with me I'll
do it. If you'll marry me we'll leave here and settle in some big town,
where there's men, and business, and things doing. It's not too late for
me to find an opening.... I can see it by the way folks treat me when I
go down to Hepburn or Nettleton...."
Charity made no movement. Nothing in his appeal reached her heart, and
she thought only of words to wound and wither. But a growing lassitude
restrained her. What did anything matter that he was saying? She saw the
old life closing in on her, and hardly heeded his fanciful picture of
renewal.
"Charity--Charity--say you'll do it," she heard him urge, all his lost
years and wasted passion in his voice.
"Oh, what's the use of all this? When I leave here it won't be with
you.
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