"You didn't say you weren't. Who is he?"
"If you'll stay on about half an hour or so, you'll see him. No—you can't. I've got to get dressed before I let him up. He has very strict ideas—where I'm concerned."
"Then why did you let me come up?" Norman said, with a penetrating glance.
She lowered her gaze and a faint flush stole into her cheeks. Was it confession of the purpose he suspected? Or, was it merely embarrassment?
"I heard of a case once," continued Norman, his gaze significantly direct, "the case of a girl who was in love with a poor young fellow. She wanted money—luxury. Also, she wanted the poor young fellow."
The color flamed into the girl's face, then left it pale. Her white fingers fluttered with nervous grace into her masses of hair and back to her lap again, to rest there in timid quiet.
"She knew another man," pursued Norman, "one who was able to give her what she wanted in the way of comfort. So, she decided to make an arrangement with the man, and keep it hidden from her lover—and in that way get along pleasantly until her lover was in better circumstances ."
Her gaze was upon her hands, listless in her lap. He felt that he had spoken her unspoken, probably unformed thoughts. Yes, unformed. Men and women, especially women, habitually pursued these unacknowledged and—even unformed purposes, in their conflicts of the desire to get what they wanted and their desire to appear well to themselves.
"What would you think of an arrangement like that?" asked he, determined to draw her secret heart into the open where he could see, where she could see.
She lifted frank, guileless eyes to his. "I suppose the girl was trying to do the best she could."