“Azalea!”
He seemed shocked.
“Do you mean,” I asked him, angry, Carin, for one of the few times in my life, “that I ought not to mention that I was once a poor little waif, a show girl, a sad-hearted dancer? Yes, I was an ill-cared for, shamed little Infant Phenomenon, and I don’t care who knows it. And then I was poor Ma McBirney’s beloved child, and I took the place to her of her little dead daughter; that warmed and saved me and taught me love and faith, and I don’t care who knows that, either. Then I was Carin Carson’s friend, and we worked and learned together, and you saw us, and you liked me as I was then. Now I’m Azalea Knox of Mallowbanks, with such relatives and acquaintances as Fate has given me, and I’m grateful and proud of that, too. I take all as it comes, Rain-in-the-Face, and I cannot for the life of me understand what you are sulking about.”
“Am I sulking? I am unhappy. How could you change so? You used not to talk as you do now, nor dress as you do now. You asked me to forgive you your fortune and your place in the world, and I liked it and laughed at it and—and forgave it. Though it was hard. But still I didn’t want to come down here. I fought against it. I had too dear a memory of you, Azalea, to want to come down here in any other way than as your lover, and I knew it would never be fair to come that way—that your relatives would object. So I found one excuse after another for not coming, but your grandmother over-persuaded me. And my heart out-argued me, too. I had to come. I thought: ‘All the world may change, but she never will. She will be the same.’ But you aren’t—you aren’t!”
“Are you?” I retorted. “Do you imagine for a moment, Rain-in-the-Face, that after three years in New York City, making your way among artists and other clever, charming people, that you are the same boy who went singing over Sunset Gap? You are not, at all. Now you are not afraid to be rude or disagreeable or masterful, but then you would not have been one of those things. You were too kind.”
“So you think me unkind?”
“Horribly.”
“I am sorry.”
“But I’m sorrier.”
“What can I do to make you change your mind?”