“I don’t want any terms.”
“Oh, but there must be terms. He couldn’t let you do it––”
“He could let me do it for him, couldn’t he? I’d go through fire, if it’d make him a bit more comfortable than he is.”
Barbara could not believe her ears. “Do you want me to understand that––?”
“That I’ll do whatever will make him happy just to make him happy? Yes. That’s it. He didn’t need to send no one—to send anyone—to ask me, because I’ve told him so already. He wants me to get out. Well, I’m ready to get out. He wants me to go to the bad. Well, I’m ready––”
“Yes; he understands all that. But, don’t you see? a man in his position couldn’t take such a sacrifice from a girl in yours––”
“Unless he pays me for it in cash.”
“That’s putting it in a nutshell. If you owned a house, for instance, and I wanted it, I’d buy it from you and pay you for it; but I couldn’t take it as a gift, no matter how liberal you were nor how much I needed it.”
“I can see that about a house; but your own self is different. I could sell a house when I couldn’t sell—myself.”
“Oh, but would you call that selling yourself?”