She took her hands away. “You and your pride,” she said, her voice suddenly hard, angry. “You don’t care about this. You don’t care about us.” She drew in a deep breath, burst out, “You’ve seen too many gangster pictures—that’s what’s wrong with you.”
“It’s not like that,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” she said. Her voice was now elaborately controlled. “Yon want revenge. You think Killeano has crowded you, and you have to shake your reputation in his face. You can’t resist doing that. You like long chances. You think it’s big and smart to go back alone against that mob who stop at nothing. Just because Bogart and Cagney do it for a living, you have to do it too.”
I took a pull at my highball, shook my head.
“It wasn’t as if they beat you, burnt you with cigarettes, took off your clothes and paraded you before a crowd of grinning prison guards,” she went on, her voice low. “They didn’t come into your cell at night, did they ? You didn’t have a crazy woman whispering through the bars at you—awful, filthy whispering …”
“Honey…”
“Well, did you? I’m the one who suffered, not you. I don’t want revenge. I want you. I don’t want anything or anyone but you. I’m out of it. I’m glad to be out of it. God! I’m glad to be out of it. But you want to go back. You want to fight them. You want to avenge me. But I don’t want to be avenged.” Her voice broke suddenly. “Darling—can’t you think of me a little—can’t you let this one thing go—for me? For us?”
I patted her arm, stood up.
There was a long silence, then I heard her get up. She came and stood by my side, slipped her arm through mine.
“Was that what you meant when you said I wouldn’t fit in with your kind of life?” she asked.