"Only?" McAllen was troubled.
"Only I think he couldn't have changed suddenly from a little fool into a man if he hadn't felt that there was an understanding. And his letters, one every week, confirm that; though he's very careful, because of his promise, not to make love in them.... You see, he's been working his head off—there's no way out of it, Billy—for me.... If you hadn't crossed my humble path I think I should have possessed enough sentiment for David to have been—the reward."
"But there was no understanding."
"No. Not in so many words. But at the last talk we had together he was humble and pathetic and rather manly, and I did a very foolish thing."
"What?"
"Oh," she said with a blush, "I sat still."
"Let me blot it out," said McAllen, drawing her very close.
"But I can only remember up to seven," said she, "and I am afraid that nothing can blot them out as far as David is concerned. He will come to-morrow as sure that I have been faithful to him as that he has been faithful to me.... It's all very dreadful.... He will pay me back the money, and the interest; and then I shall give him back the promises that he gave, and then he will make love to me...."
She sighed, and said that the thought of the pickle she had got herself into made her temples ache. McAllen kissed them for her.
"But why," he said, "when you got to care for me, didn't you let this young man learn gradually in your letters to him that—that it was all off?"