"You might be something even better if you were," retorted he coldly. "The only qualities I don't like about you are the surface qualities that have been plated on in these surroundings. And if I thought it was anything but just you that I was marrying, I'd lose no time about leaving you. I'd not let myself degrade myself."
"Fred—that tone—and don't—please don't look at me like that!" she begged.
But his powerful glance searched on. He said, "Is it possible that you and I are deceiving ourselves—and that we'll marry and wake up—and be bored and dissatisfied—like so many of our friends?"
"No—no," she cried, wildly agitated. "Fred, dear we love each other. You know we do. I don't use words as well as you do—and my mind works in a queer way—Perhaps I didn't mean what I said. No matter. If my love were put to the test—Fred, I don't ask anything more than that your love for me would stand the tests my love for you would stand."
He caught her in his arms and kissed her with more passion than he had ever felt for her before. "I believe you, Jo," he said. "I believe you."
"I love you so—that I could be jealous even of her—of that little girl in your office. Fred, I didn't confess all the truth. It isn't true that I thought her—a nobody. When she first came in here—it was in this very room—I thought she was as near nothing as any girl I'd ever seen. Then she began to change—as you said. And—oh, dearest, I can't help hating her! And when I tried to get her away from you, and she wouldn't come——"
"Away from me!" he cried, laughing.
"I felt as if it were like that," she pleaded. "And she wouldn't come—and treated me as if she were queen and I servant—only politely, I must say, for Heaven knows I don't want to injure her——"
"Shall I have her discharged?"