“Nothing else?”
“Oh, yes; in a way of speaking. Once in a while a bit of heaven comes now and then to one or another of us—when some man lets a girl go and live with him till he gets tired of her.”
“And you call that heaven?”
“Some does: for me, I’d say it depends on who the man is.”
He lighted a cigar and puffed at it in silence. And when he spoke again: “Do you care to tell me what brought you to this, Mona?”
“You wouldn’t want to know.” Then, in lower tones and with her face averted: “I ain’t got no hard-luck story to tell. I just went bad because I was ... but what’s the use of trying to make you see? It’s just in the blood, or it ain’t; and I’m thinking it ain’t in your blood at all.”
He smiled soberly.
“Maybe there are worse things in my blood than anything you will ever have to plead guilty to. But that is neither here nor there. Tell me this, Mona: if you could have one wish, and could be sure it would be granted, what would it be?”
“My God! Can you ask me that?—after what I’ve been telling you?”
“I can and I do. I have been thinking a good deal about you since—since that morning when you sat here on the bed and told me how I came to be here in this room. You were honest with me then. I’ve been wondering if you could go on being honest with me.”