"What nonsense! You are like Cæsar's wife, I guess. Anything you did in this town would seem about right. You've got them all hypnotised, including myself. It's the ambition of my life to know you better," he added in a more serious tone. "Why won't you let me call?"
"It wouldn't do. If I have a nice position it's because I've always been so particular. If I let young men call on me, people would say that I was no better than that fast bunch that tangoes every night and goes to road houses and things." Her voice trailed off vaguely; she really knew very little of the doings of "gay sets," although much in the abstract of a too temperamental world.
She made up her mind to dispose of this misguided young man once for all. She knew that she looked quite ten years younger than her age, and she was well aware that although man's passion might be business his pastime was the hunt.
"I am thankful that I have no grown daughter to keep from running with that bunch," she said playfully. "Of course I might have. I am quite old enough."
He laughed outright. Then he said the old thing which is ever new to the woman, and with a perceptible softening in his hard energetic voice: "I wonder if you really are as conventional—conventionised—as you perhaps think you are? You always give me the impression of being two women, one fast asleep deep down somewhere, the other not even suspecting her existence."
"How pretty!" She smiled with pleasure, and she felt a faint stirring of coquetry, as if the ghost of her youth were rising—that far-off period when she put on her best ribbons and made her best pies to allure the marriageable swains of Elsinore. But she recalled herself quickly and frowned. "You must not say such things to me," she said coldly.
"But I shall, and I will add that I wish you were a widow, or had never been married. I should propose to you this minute."
"That is equivalent to saying that you wish my husband were dead. And he is your friend, too!"
"Your husband is not my friend; he is my employer—upon occasion. At the moment I did not remember who was your husband. Let it go at that."
"Very well."