“That wasn’t our original arrangement,” he said to gain time.
“Deduct it from the rest. I must have it. I can’t go without it. If you give me the check now I’ll leave for New York to-night.”
Her reviving interest and force seemed to have quenched the sources of her tears as suddenly as her exhausted nerves had made them flow. But her disfigured face, her figure which seemed to have shrunken in its fine clothes, were extremely pathetic.
“If you don’t trust me send one of your clerks with me to buy my ticket, send one to see me off. I’ve left my husband for good, for ever. I can’t live here any longer. Give me the money and let me go.”
“I don’t see that I’m going to have any security that you’re going to carry out the whole plan. How do I know that you’re not going to New York to have a good time and then, when you’ve spent the money, come back here?”
She sat up and sent a despairing look about the room as if in a wild search for something that would convince him of her sincerity.
“I swear, I promise,” she cried with almost frantic emphasis, “that I’ll never come back. I’m going for good and I’m going to set Dominick free. Oh, do believe me. Please. I’m telling the truth.”
He was impressed by her manner, as he had been by her tears. Something undoubtedly had happened which had suddenly caused her to change her mind and decide to leave her husband. He did not think that it was what she had told him. Her excitement, her overwrought condition suggested a cause less gradual, more like a shock. He ran over in his mind the advantages of giving her the money. Nothing would be jeopardized by it. It would simply be an advance made on the sum they had agreed upon.
“Fifty thousand’s too much,” he said slowly. “But I’ll be square to you and I’ll split the difference and give you twenty-five. I’ll give you the check now and you can take it and go to-night.”
She shook her head obstinately.