“Miss Pendleton,” said David Joslin, “that’s not the way to treat me.”
Silence fell between them. Polly Pendleton, hurt and grieved still over the sting of his earlier words—which he had spoken only in condemnation of himself, not her, began to tremble about her lips.
She heard his low, vibrant voice go on. “I couldn’t bear to see you reach out your hands to those men there to-night. You touched me, once! For sake of that, I’m quitting my school.”
“It was only in a song!” she broke out “I’ve done that to a thousand men, I expect, and I didn’t care a cent for any one of them. It’s in the game—it’s part of my way of making a living. I’ve got to live.”
She laughed now with half a sob. “There can’t be in all the world any one man for me, I suppose—that’s the price we have to pay, who do this sort of thing.”
“I don’t understand you at all.”
“Well, I don’t—I won’t—there isn’t——” replied Polly somewhat incoherently. “Listen, man! You’ve got to stop this! I can’t stand it. This means too much to you. You’ve taken it all in earnest when there wasn’t anything to it but a joke—a game—a business. And besides—I told you——”
“What do you mean that you told me?”
“I told you—that—that I wasn’t good! Do you think that’s easy for me to say?”
“A woman as beautiful as you could not be anything but good.”