“Surely you’ll shake hands,” said he gently, friendlily. “I understand. I like you for what you are, not for what you ought to be. Come, give me your hand, my friend.”
She sighed, gazed up at him. “Suppose I said I’d give up everything for you. What then?” she asked.
“Why, you’d be saying what isn’t true.”
“Chang,” she said earnestly, “I think I’d give up everything for you. But since it is you who ask me—you to whom I feel I must tell the exact truth—I had to be honest. And the honest truth is I don’t know. And any girl, in the same circumstances, would say precisely the same thing—if she weren’t lying—or just romancing.”
“You are a trump, Rix!” he exclaimed. There was a look in his eyes that would have thrilled her, had she seen it. But before she turned her gaze upon him again, he had controlled his impulsive self-revelation. In his usual manner he went on: “I’m proud of your friendship. It’s always good to be reminded that there are people of the right sort on earth. But you see yourself now that I was right from the beginning. We don’t belong in the same class. We couldn’t comfortably travel the same road. We——”
“Would you marry me if I gave up everything for you?” she interrupted.
“No,” was the prompt reply. “Any man who did that to your sort of girl would be a fool—and worse. But don’t forget another fact, my dear. I wouldn’t marry you in any circumstances. I’m not marrying. I’m married already, as I told you before. I don’t believe in any other kind of marriage—for my kind of man. I love my freedom. And I shall keep it.”
There was no mistaking the ring of those decisive words. The girl shrank a little. She began in a choked, uncertain voice: “But you said——”
“Rix, my dear friend, I said nothing that contradicted what I’ve always told you—what I believe in as I believe in my work. You knew perfectly well that I was merely ironic a few minutes ago. I didn’t want to part from you with you imagining you were broken-hearted. That’s why I let you run on and on—until you came that fearful cropper. Oh, what a cropper for romantic Rix!”
She laughed with a partial return of her old gayety. “I do feel cheap,” said she—“dirt cheap.”