“No,” said Steve, shortly. “You mean well, Mrs. Dan, but you don’t know all, or you wouldn’t ask it.”
“But I do know all,” said Mrs. Dan. “That’s why I ask.”
He stared at her. “You do know—how and what?” he said.
“All that’s happened between you as far as the girl can tell it. Steve, I asked her, and I wanted to help. I—she has no woman to speak to, Steve, and you wouldn’t grudge a girl the consolation of havin’ another woman to talk to, and her shoulder to cry on.”
“There’s nothing I mind you knowing about me, old friend,” said Steve, “and I’m glad if it eased her to tell you. But, knowing the story, I don’t see what you want me to do, or what more you expect. Everything’s finished between us.”
“Look me full in the eyes, Steve, and tell me straight, in so many words, you don’t love her, and say you don’t want to see her again—and I’ll have no more to say. Will you give me your word of honour on that?”
“No, for it would be a lie,” said Steve, steadily. “But that is beside the point, and it’s perhaps because of that I won’t see her. I could laugh and smile to myself at another girl saying her cruellest—but I can’t with her.”
“Steve, you know that what you’re saying to me will never be repeated, and you wouldn’t think more of me if I told you all the girl said to me, so I can say nothing. But surely you know I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that is going to be to the hurt of you. Can’t you take my word for it and come and see her?”
Steve looked at her keenly. “You say she has told you all; and I know you’d sooner stab yourself than pin-prick me. The two things don’t run together. There’s things she has left out, or softened down, I’m thinking, and you don’t understand yet.”
“She told me all,” repeated Mrs. Dan, “and I could have struck her myself at some of the telling. But in face of it all, Steve, I ask you to come.”