"Haven't you any desire to be respectable—decent?"
"I guess not," confessed she. "What is there in that direction for me?"
"A woman doesn't stay young and good-looking long."
"No." She smiled faintly. "But does she get old and ugly any slower for being married?"
He rose and stood over her, looked smiling danger down at her. She leaned back in her chair to meet his eyes without constraint. "You're trying to play me a trick," said he. "But you're not going to get away with the goods. I'm astonished that you are so rotten ungrateful."
"Because I'm not for sale?"
"Queenie balking at selling herself," he jeered. "And what's the least you ever did sell for?"
"A half-dollar, I think. No—two drinks of whiskey one cold night. But what I sold was no more myself than—than the coat I'd pawned and drunk up before I did it."
The plain calm way in which she said this made it so terrible that he winced and turned away. "We have seen hell—haven't we?" he muttered. He turned toward her with genuine passion of feeling. "Susan," he cried, "don't be a fool. Let's push our luck, now that things are coming our way. We need each other—we want to stay together—don't we?"
"I want to stay. I'm happy."