"I want you—" she paused, then turned and resolutely faced him—"I want you to be—just friends with me again," she said.
His eyes looked straight into hers. "In public you mean?" he said.
"In private too," she answered.
"For how long?" Swiftly he asked the question, his eyes still holding hers with a certain mastery of possession.
She made a slight gesture of pleading. "Until you know me better," she said.
His brows went up. "That's not a business proposition, is it? You don't really expect me to agree to that. Now do you?"
"Ah! But you've got to understand," she said rather piteously. "I'm not in the least the sort of woman you think I am. I'm not—Dick, I'm not—a specially good woman."
She spoke the words with painful effort, her eyes wavered before his. But in a moment, without hesitation, he had leapt to the rescue.
"My darling, don't tell me that! I can see what you are. I know! I know! I don't want your own valuation. I won't listen to it. It's the one point on which your opinion has no weight whatever with me. Please don't say any more about it! It's you that I love—just as you are. If you were one atom less human, you wouldn't be you, and my love—our love—might never have been."
She sighed. "It would have saved a lot of trouble if it hadn't, Dick."