"I know you will."
"You see now I was right in feeling you must go?"
"I felt it, Courtney, the moment we three stood together there in my room—though I wouldn't admit it to myself. If I stayed, there'd be a crime, or a scandal that'd spatter you with mud and brand you with shame. It simply could not be otherwise."
"I haven't told you the real deep-down reason why I felt you must go."
"No," he said. "Your real reason was the same as mine."
"Because it was all so vulgar and—and cheap?"
"Cheap—that's it!" he exclaimed. "Cheap!"
"I could stand it," she went on, "to commit and to have you commit, big, bold sins, scarlet and black. I might even glory in it. I wasn't a bit ashamed that first night. I think I even got a sort of joy out of defying all I'd been brought up to believe was moral and right and lady-like. But— Not when we stood there, like two caught sneak thieves."
"That was it, Courtney," eagerly assented he. And he went on, in a tone in which a less love-blinded woman might have detected an accent of repentance for masculine thoughts of disrespect: "No wonder I love you! How happy we shall be, when you're free. How good and pure you are—and innocent. It needn't be long—in this State—need it?"
"I think not," she laughed. "Being a judge's daughter, I ought to know. But I don't."