“Why—” he began, inadequately. “What is it?”
“It’s simply this, Jim,” she answered him—and her voice, now, was high and thin and unmodulated, constricted, by some inward tension, to a gramophonic tumult of syllables. “There has got to be a limit, somewhere. At some point we have got to draw the line. We have been forgetting a great many things. But I can not and will not be a common thief—for you—or for anything you can bring to me—or to my life!”
“You say that?”
“Yes, I do; and if you cared for me—if you thought of my feelings—if you thought of my happiness, you would never ask me to do such things—you would never make me suffer like this!”
He threw up his hands with what was almost a gesture of exasperation.
“But you will not be a common thief—it will not be stealing at all! Can’t you see that?”
“No, I can not. And you know as well as I know, that when we try to justify it we do it only by a quibble!”
“But I tell you every penny of that money will go back where it came from!”
“Then why can’t we go to Lydia Van Schaick and ask her to lend us the money?”
“That’s ridiculous!”