“Is it the devil you’re calling it?” she laughed.
“Yes; and you know well enough that is the right name for it. But never mind; let me ask you this: I know it is a part of your business to tell lies and nothing but lies to any man who comes here. Can you tell the truth for once in a way, if you try?”
“I guess so, maybe—to you.”
He fixed her with a half-absent gaze. “How old are you, Mona?”
“If I live till Christmas, I’ll be twenty.”
“Twenty years old and well on the road to hell,” he said musingly; adding: “Or perhaps you are not calling it hell?”
“Am I not?” she flashed back. “But what’s the use? You didn’t come here to put the whip to me, did you? God knows, I can do that well enough for myself!”
“No,” he answered, “I came to ask you a few questions. What is there for a woman in your condition to look forward to?—or is there anything?”
Her lips twisted in a wry smile.
“A few years of this, maybe, and then a little bigger dose of the chloral than it takes to put you to sleep. That is, for them that have got the nerve.”