"If it were necessary—yes. So long as I've got my youth and my health, I'll do precisely as I please. I've no craving for respectability—not the slightest. I—I——" She tried to speak of her birth, that secret shame of which she was ashamed. She had been thinking that Brent's big fine way of looking at things had cured her of this bitterness. She found that it had not—as yet. So she went on, "I'd prefer your friendship to your ill will—much prefer it, as you're the only person I can look to for what a man can do for a woman, and as I like you. But if I have to take tyranny along with the friendship—" she looked at him quietly and her tones were almost tender, almost appealing—"then, it's good-by, Rod."
She had silenced him, for he saw in her eyes, much more gray than violet though the suggestion of violet was there, that she meant precisely what she said. He was astonished, almost dazed by the change in her. This woman grown was not the Susie who had left him. No—and yet——
She had left him, hadn't she? That showed a character completely hidden from him, perhaps the character he was now seeing. He asked—and there was no sarcasm and a great deal of uneasiness in his tone:
"How do you expect to make a living?"
"I've got a place at forty dollars a week."
"Forty dollars a week! You!" He scowled savagely at her.
"There's only one thing anyone would pay you forty a week for."
"That's what I'd have said," rejoined she. "But it seems not to be true. My luck may not last, but while it lasts, I'll have forty a week."
"I don't believe you," said he, with the angry bluntness of jealousy.
"Then you want me to go?" inquired she, with a certain melancholy but without any weakness.
He ignored her question. He demanded: