"Well, if I'd known that you didn't know I'd have told you, all right. I wormed it out of Dad soon after you arrived, and at first I thought it was a good joke on Society, to say nothing of Price Ruyler, with his air of God having created heaven first, maybe, but New York just after. Then I got fond of you and I wouldn't have told for the world. But I would have put you on your guard if I'd known."
"Oh, it doesn't matter. Even if Price doesn't find out about this, if he learns the other—who my father was, and that awful men have recognized my mother—I suppose he'll hate me, and in time I'll go back to Rouen—"
"Now, you don't think as ill as that of him, do you? He makes me so mad sometimes I could spit in his face, but if he's one thing he's true blue. He's the straight masculine type with a streak of old romance that would make him love a woman the more, the sorrier he was for her, and the weaker she was—I mean so long as she was young. After this, just get to work on your character, kid. When you're thirty maybe he won't feel that it's his whole duty to protect you. You'll never be hard and seasoned like me, nor able to take care of yourself. I like danger, and excitement, and uncertainty, and mystery, and intrigue, and lying, and wriggling out of tight places. I'd have gone mad in this hole long ago, if I hadn't, for I don't care for sport. But you were intended to develop into what is called a 'fine woman,' surrounded by the right sort of man meanwhile. And Price Ruyler is the right sort. I'll say that much for him. He'd have driven me to drink, but he's just your sort—"
"And what am I doing? I am the most degraded woman in the world."
"Oh, no, you're not. Not by a long sight. You don't know how much worse you could be. One woman who is here to-night I saw lying dead drunk in the road between San Mateo and Burlingame the other day when I was driving with Alice Thorndyke, and Alice is having her fourth or fifth lover, I forget which—"
"They are no worse than I."
"Listen. He's coming. Got it ready?"
"I can't."
"You must. He'll hound you in the Merry Tattler until the whole town knows you're a welcher, and not a soul would speak to you. That is the one unpardonable sin—"
"I wish I'd told Price—"