“You can neither excuse nor justify your words and actions towards Mary Johnson not a month ago.”
“They’re liars, I tell you.”
“Will you confront them and say that?”
Taken by surprise Sorenson hesitated, flushed, and then made a gesture of disdain.
“I’ll not, because I’ll not condescend to answer such baseless charges,” he stated. “I thought you had sense enough not to believe every little thing you hear. Certainly I expect you not to believe this, and I know you won’t on consideration. Then we’ll be married. I came here to-night to urge you to marry me soon.”
“I’ll never marry you, and we’re no longer engaged. You’ve acted faithlessly and dishonorably. You’re not the decent man I thought you were.”
“Don’t you still love me, Janet?”
“No. I don’t think I ever loved you; I was loving a man who didn’t exist, an illusion I imagined to be Ed Sorenson, not your real self. If I loved at all, which I now doubt! And you never loved me, though you 123 may think you did and still do. But it’s not so; for no man who really loved a respectable girl could at the same time do what you did. Think of it! While pretending to love me, you were secretly trying to inveigle that poor ignorant girl away from home. You’re not a man; you’re a beast. The shame and disgust and humiliation I suffer at the thought of my position during that time, your effort to hoodwink both Mary Johnson and me, so fills me with anger I can’t talk to you. Go, go! And please don’t even speak to me hereafter, on the street or anywhere else.”
Instead of departing the man grasped her wrist and gave her a venomous look.
“It was this sneak of an engineer, after all, who told you this lie and turned you against me,” he snarled.