“I shall leave this place to-morrow. It will be very—well, very unwise for you to annoy me.”
“I’m going to follow you.”
“Mr. Latisan, I have listened to you; you shall listen to me!” She spoke sharply. Now she displayed the equipoise of one who had learned much from self-reliant contact with men. “I’ll not argue with you about what you call love. But there’s something which love must have, and that’s self-respect. If your folly on account of me takes you away from your honest duty you’ll despise me when you come to yourself. You have been honest with me. I’ll be honest with you. I like you. I can see that you’re a big, true man—much different from most of the men I have met before this. But I shall lose all my good opinion of you if you desert your job. And, as I have said, you’ll hate me if I allow you to do so. Can we afford to take chances?”
While he pondered she made hurried mental account of stock in her own case.
She was not admitting that she felt any especial consideration for this man as a lover; she was protecting her grandfather and striving for her own peace of mind as a payer of a debt of honor. He followed her when she walked on toward the tavern.
“May I ask what you mean by taking chances? Chances on being something more to each other than we are now?” he asked, wistfully.
“I think we have gone quite far enough for one evening, sir.”
He pulled off his cap. “Before I go to sleep I shall say my little prayer. I shall ask that you won’t be thinking I have gone too far. I’m sure it won’t be a prayer to the God of the Old Testament, such as Eck Flagg was reading about. I’ll whisper up to Mother Mary. She understands women. I don’t.”
He bowed in silence when she gave him a hasty “good night!”
Latisan whirled suddenly after the girl closed the door behind her—came about on his heels so quickly that he nearly bumped into the assiduous operative Crowley, who had been taking desperate chances that evening.