"Oh, I'm not a favorite! They don't bombard me in any such fashion. Once in a while, perhaps, but...." She raised her hands slightly.
"Once in a while!" he echoed, with a bitter laugh, "Then they do throw money at you! You ... you take all this from strangers, but from me ... from me, who...." He brought his fist down upon the table.
She put her hand upon his. "I give these people pleasure and they repay me as they can.... There is one thing about a flung coin—it is frank and open and honest."
He glanced down. "And insulting, too," he muttered. "God knows there have been times enough when I forgot myself.... I'm a man, after everything is said and done. The mistakes I made were never deliberate ... calculating. I did want to serve you!"
"What did you expect me to do?" she asked, more gently.
"I don't know. But I fancy it was almost anything but this. It seems that almost anything else would be better."
"Even taking dictation from Flint?"
He winced.
"Oh, I know what you are thinking," she went on, passionately. "You're thinking that it is this life that has given me the courage to be hard and bitter—to dress myself in this ... to paint my lips red." She held up the rouge-stained napkin and shrugged. "But you forget Flint and Mrs. Condor and all the nastiness of the life that you seem to think desirable simply because it is familiar.... I wouldn't go back to it now even if I could. I'd rather take a chance here where they throw money frankly in your face and then promptly forget about it; where they don't demand anything of you beyond just the passing moment. Where one hasn't any standards to live up to and cheat for. Yes, cheat for! Not that these people haven't standards—they're full of them. But they don't expect me to live up to them. I can be as virtuous or as immoral as I choose. They are willing to leave my soul in my own keeping!"
He shaded his face. "Just think," he said, as he raised his eyes to her again. "I made a million dollars last month, and I am more helpless than the meanest person here with ten cents in his pocket. If I were poor and miserable and struggling, I could at least come and sit opposite you and throw my last penny at you. I could throw my last coin at your feet and go away happy, knowing that I must starve to-morrow, because of you. Why is it that others may do what I—"