"If I haven't," she assured me, "it has been simply to save your feelings."
I gulped down a little rising storm of indignation.
"You must marry sometime. Eve," I said. "There isn't any one in America, is there?"
"There are a great many," she assured me. "It was to get away from them, as much as anything, that I came over with father on this business trip."
"Business trip!" I groaned.
"Oh! I dare say it all seems very disgraceful to any one like you—you who were born with plenty of money and have never been obliged to earn any, and have mixed with respectable people all your life!" she exclaimed. "All the same, let me tell you there are plenty of charming and delightful people going about the world earning their living by their wits—simply because they are forced to. There is more than one code of morals, you know."
I flatter myself that at this point I was tactful.
"My dear Eve," I reminded her, "you forget that I have joined the gang—I mean," I corrected myself hastily, "that I have offered to associate myself with you and your father in any of your enterprises. I am perfectly willing to give up anything in life you may consider too respectable. At the same time I must say there are limits so far as you are concerned."
She pouted a little.
"I hate being out of things," she said.