“You are honest, through and through,” he protested. “You are as strong and true as steel.”
She shook her head, but he caught her in his arms, and she lay there half-happy again.
“Oh, Frank, for the twentieth time,” he pleaded, “won’t you marry me?”
“No, no, no; not till we’re honest!” she cried, in alarm. “I wouldn’t dare to, I couldn’t, until then.”
“But we’re only what we have been. We can’t change it all in a day, can we—especially when there is so much behind?”
“I want to be decent,” she cried, in a sort of muffled wail. “No, no; I can’t marry you, Jim, not yet. We may not be honest with other people, but we must be honest with ourselves!”
One of the policemen directing the street-traffic at Forty-Second Street glanced in at them, through the misty window, and smiled broadly. It seemed to remind her of other worlds, for she at once sat up more decorously.
“Time! Time! we are losing time—and I have so much to tell you.”
“Then give me your hand to hold, while you talk.”
She hesitated for a half-laughing moment, and then surrendered it.