"I beg your pardon," said he. "I
forgot for the moment that I was talking to a man young enough still to
have youth's delusions about women. You'll learn that they're human, that
it's from them we men inherit our weaknesses. However, let's assume that
she won't take it: _Why_ won't she take your money? What is there
about it that repels Ellersly's daughter, brought up in the sewers of
fashionable New York--the sewers, sir!"
"She does not love me," I answered.
"I have hurt you," he said quickly, in great distress at having compelled
me to expose my secret wound.
"The wound does not ache the worse," said I, "for my showing it--to
_you_." And that was the truth. I looked over toward Dawn Hill whose
towers could just be seen. "We live there." I pointed. "She is--like a
guest in my house."
When I glanced at him again, his face betrayed a feeling of which I doubt
if any one had thought him capable in many a year. "I see that you love
her," he said, gently as a mother.
"Yes," I replied. And presently I went on: "The idea of any one I love
being dependent on me in a sordid way is most distasteful to me. And since
she does not love me, does not even like me, it is doubly necessary that
she be independent.
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