“If it were only that, boy,” she continued. “But I am more than six years older, Walter; I am ages older. I have lived ... lived——” she stopped and let her eyes rove about the room. “Years! What are years!” She threw up her hands. “Twenty-eight? I’m nearer a hundred and twenty-eight! Life has burned me out, and all the faster because before the world I am too proud to own to it; in experience, boy, I am an old woman.”
He stopped her and told her of her youth and her beauty and her compelling loveliness. His voice trembled, but he forced himself through a strong manly speech.
“Fine!” cried Phœbe. “Boy! Boy!” she crooned, “it’s yourself you’re comin’ to now! Now you’re talkin’ like a man! Talkin’ like a man, you are! And let me talk to you like a woman. Maybe I didn’t say I would marry you, but I was ready to—if I was forced to it——”
“Forced!” he exclaimed. “What d’ y’ mean?”
“Just that—forced.” Her voice was low now, and solemn. “If there had been no other way out, no other way to save you from yourself, I’d have done it. You and your mother and Jerry are all I have, and what would I not do for them? I would have done it; but it would have been like taking in some hunted creature that everybody had given up. And that is pity, Walter; just pity.”
“Don’t care what you call it,” he said.
“Pity is all right for stray dogs, Walter. If you had been just a crippled little puppy—well, I could have shared everything with you. But to marry, to live together—I couldn’t. I thought I could, but now I see that I never could. I am not big enough for that.”
He stood up and began to summon his strength to combat her, but she waved him down.
“Listen,” she said. “Listen until I finish.... Boy, it wouldn’t work. We’re not the mates for each other. No! No! We’re not, I tell you.”
Then he broke forth in speeches that were mixtures of strength and weakness. He demanded his rights; he begged her to be kind; he threatened; he pointed out the misery she was planning for him.