"That's very nice of you."
There was a kind of laugh. "I hope you'll think so after you've read it."
"I'll read it now, if I may," Said Franklin, holding out his hand.
"You may as well." But she tore the letter into small pieces and dropped them at her feet. "No. Why should I give you the pleasure of seeing how much you've made me suffer?"
The word suffer and the unconcealed break in the woman's voice puzzled and surprised Franklin. Was she acting? He saw no reason why she should. It never entered into the very recesses of his mind that there could be any sentiment on her part. Why should there be? "That wouldn't give me any pleasure," he said, with a sort of boyish sincerity.
She looked at him a little eagerly, saw that there was nothing in his eyes that she needed, nodded two or three times and shrugged her shoulders. It was a hard thing to be made to confess that this man who was so desirable had merely passed a few hours with her for the lack of a friend. A new thing, too, after her wide experience of men. Nevertheless, she had run through the last of her remaining money. This was no hour for pride. She stood in dire and urgent need of funds. It was impossible for him to be her husband, but well within the range of her ability to see that he became her banker.
"Did you know that I was in the library?" she asked, making one more effort to prove herself wrong in her quick intuition. This was probably, she told herself, a marriage of convenience.
"No."
"You just came in by accident?"
"Yes."