"I'll get you out of this, Loo. No girl in God's world will have to find herself tied up to me without I can show her a million dollars every time she remembers that she's married to a rotter. I'll get you out of this, girl, so you won't even show a scratch. I'll—"
"Charley," she said, lifting herself by his coat lapels, and her eyes again so closely level with his, "you're crazy with the heat—stark, raving crazy! You got your chance, boy, to show what you're made of—can't you see that? We're going West, where men get swept out with clean air and clean living. We'll break ground in this here life for the kind of pay-dirt that'll make a man of you. You hear? A man of you!"
He lifted her arms, and because they were pressing insistently down, squirmed out from beneath them.
"You're a good sport, girl; nobody can take that from you. But just the same, I'm going to let you off without a scratch."
"'Good sport'! I'd like to know, anyways, where I come in with all your solid-gold talk. Me that's stood behind somebody-or-other's counter ever since I had my working-papers."
"I'll get you out of—"
"Have I ever lived anywheres except in a dirty little North St. Louis flat with us three girls in a bed? Haven't I got my name all over town for speed, just because I've always had to rustle out and try to learn how to flatten out a dime to the size of a dollar? Where do I come in on the solid-gold talk, I'd like to know. I'm the penny-splitter of the world, the girl that made the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store millinery department famous. I can look tailor-made on a five-dollar bill and a tissue-paper pattern. Why, honey, with me scheming for you, starting out on your own is going to make a man of you. You got stuff in you. I knew it, Charley, the first night you spied me at the Highlands dance. Somewhere out West Charley Cox is now going to begin to show 'em the stuff in Charley Cox—that's what Charley Cox & Co. are going to do!"
He shook his head, turning away his eyes to hide their tears.
"You been stung, Loo. Nothing on earth can change that."
She turned his face back to her, smiling through her own tears.