“I thought, or tried to think, you should have known I was not a thief,” said Pen, with a soft tone in her voice, “but Larry said that only showed what a good actress I am. I told Larry all about it this morning, and he said no self-respecting man would ask a thief to marry him, not if he knew she was a thief before he loved her.”
“I didn’t read your letter,” he said, “until after I had seen the picture of ‘The Thief’ last night. So I was prepared for its contents. I read, and not entirely between the lines, that you did not care.”
“I didn’t think I did—so much—” she answered, “when I wrote that letter; but up there, Kurt, up in the clouds yesterday—something within me unlatched, and I knew that I loved you, and that my love would make you forgive me for deceiving you. You will?”
“I will. But you see there is a greater obstacle than that—or in the thought that you were a thief.”
“You mean my being a movie actress. Are you so prejudiced against the profession?”
“The obstacle is that the clerk of the hotel told me he had read somewhere that Bobbie Burr received a stupendous salary.”
“Well, don’t you think she earns it?”
“You see, a poor foreman of a ranch would never have the hardihood to ask a rich girl to marry him; he’d a thousand times rather marry a poor thief.”
“Is that the only obstacle?” she asked.
“It is, and it is unsurmountable.”