"No. I don't believe Roger knows it. He would have said something."
Merle shrugged. "Perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps Tom hasn't noticed it himself."
Her eyes misted, but she tossed her head with a cynical smile. "Oh, well, it doesn't matter. I wouldn't want him to go lallygaggin about it to others—even if he did any lallygaggin to himself."
Anne flushed. Merle and Tom together had seemed so ugly, but Merle like this was even worse.
"What happened?"
"Nothing," Merle said in fierce whisper, "nothing and everything. Anne, I couldn't stand it another minute. I tried, for the sake of the past and everything, but I couldn't." She was like a child begging forgiveness and Anne softened.
"Do you really want to talk about it, Merle?"
"Yes. It won't do any good, but I always did love to talk. I'm a good revolutionist, as far as that goes. I can babble and babble with the best of them till the cows come home. But where we part is that I do something in the end. Oh, I know they all think I'm Merle, the bobbed-haired fool, but I'm not such a fool as to sit tight and let Life run by, the one and only Life we'll ever get, and make no stab at anything in it. Anne, I'm so sick and tired of the Brotherhood of Man and the wicked capitalist and the abused proletariat, I could eat my hat. I can't live up on those holy heights and I don't want to. I always belonged down in the dust, gold dust if I could get it. And now—I'm there."
Anne waited in silence, and after a moment Merle went on:
"Of course, Katya and the rest will just believe I was tempted—if they think at all, but I wasn't. I worked it all out. I even made a kind of trial balance—what would happen if I stayed, on one side of the sheet—what would happen if I went, on the other. And I went. I'm going to keep that paper and some day I'm going to compare the results. Anyhow, I'm gone; Merle, the bobbed-haired fool, is no more. Behold Mrs. Benjamin Wilson, at least on hotel registers, and in private life—if I choose."