“Well—I didn’t see the point of so much.”
He waited a little, interestedly. “Do you think I took any advantage?”
She made no answer at first, but after a moment said in a tone he had never heard from her: “Why do you come here this way? Why do you ask me such questions?”
He hesitated; after which he broke out: “Because I love you. Don’t you know that?”
“Oh PLEASE don’t!” she almost moaned, turning away.
But he was launched now and he let himself go. “Why won’t you understand it—why won’t you understand the rest? Don’t you see how it has worked round—the heartless brutes they’ve turned into, and the way OUR life, yours and mine, is bound to be the same? Don’t you see the damned sneaking scorn with which they treat you and that I only want to do anything in the world for you?”
Francie’s white face, very quiet now, let all this pass without a sign of satisfaction. Her only response was presently to say: “Why did you ask me so many questions that day?”
“Because I always ask questions—it’s my nature and my business to ask them. Haven’t you always seen me ask you and ask every one all I could? Don’t you know they’re the very foundation of my work? I thought you sympathised with my work so much—you used to tell me you did.”
“Well, I did,” she allowed.
“You put it in the dead past, I see. You don’t then any more?”