"I was appealing to our friendship—our—our love for each other."
"Then you should have waited until I was free."
"Good God!" he cried, "don't you see that's hopeless? Mildred, be sensible—be merciful."
"I shall never marry a man when he could justly suspect I did it to live off him."
"What an idea! It's a man's place to support a woman!"
"I was speaking only of myself. I can't do it. And it's absurd for you and me to be talking about love and marriage when anyone can see I'd be marrying you only because I was afraid to face poverty and a struggle."
Her manner calmed him somewhat. "Of course it's obvious that you've got to have money," said he, "and that the only way you can get it is by marriage. But there's something else, too, and in my opinion it's the principal thing—we care for each other. Why not be sensible, Mildred? Why not thank God that as long as you have to marry, you can marry someone you care for."
"Could you feel that I cared for you, if I married you now?" inquired she.
"Why not? I'm not so entirely lacking in self-esteem. I feel that I must count for something."
Mildred sat silently wondering at this phenomenon so astounding, yet a commonplace of masculine egotism. She had no conception of this vanity which causes the man, at whom the street woman smiles, to feel flattered, though he knows full well what she is and her dire necessity. She could not doubt that he was speaking the truth, yet she could not believe that conceit could so befog common sense in a man who, for all his slowness and shallowness, was more than ordinarily shrewd.