She mused on her anomalous position—an American girl, loyal to the last ounce of her blood, in this room with a man whom she knew to be a German secret agent. Somehow the thing did not seem so inexplicable to her, but she considered it thoughtfully. She knew this man to be what he was—but had not a scrap of evidence to bolster up her knowledge. It was her duty to indicate him to the authorities, but she did not point him out—because she was tied to the trade he represented by a cable she could not break.... And she accepted him as a companion because to refuse to do so was to cut herself off from companionship. With this man alone could she move about in the world and snatch such pleasures and forgetfulness as minor excitements commanded.
For a week after that disquieting encounter with Potter Waite at the Bloomfield Hills club she had refused to see Cantor; determined she would never see him, allow him to be her escort or guard again.... But a week of lonely imprisonment forced her to give way. She sent word by the man who brought her food that she would receive Cantor, and he came.
“Does this mean that you’re through playing with me?” he demanded, coldly.
“I have never played with you,” she said.
“You have pretended to consider my offer of marriage.”
“I have considered it.”
“And your answer.”
“I can give you no answer—yet. I—You know I do not love you. But—”
“Marry me and I’ll attend to the love,” he said, grimly. “You suppose you are in love with that lunatic Waite.... Let me tell you that you may as well forget him first as last. If you were the last woman in the world, he would never marry you.”
She flashed out at him in fury. “It wouldn’t matter who or what I was,” she said, “Potter Waite would marry me to-morrow. What do you know about it? You know nothing about such a man as Potter; you have no standards to judge him by.... He’s real, he’s honest. He loves me....”