She pondered this a moment. “Then—you're not going to tell?”
He shook his head. “I don't expect to. I want you to be free to decide what you're going to do—though I hope you'll decide not to go through with this thing you're doing.”
She made no response. Larry had spoken with control until now, but his next words burst from him.
“Don't you see what a situation it's put me in, Maggie—trying to play square with my friends, the Sherwoods, and trying to play square with you?”
Again she did not answer.
“Maggie, you're too good for what you're doing—it's all a terrible mistake!” he cried passionately. Then he remembered himself, and spoke with more composure. “Oh, I know there's not much use in talking to you now—while you feel as you do about yourself—and while you feel as you do about me. But you know I love you, and want to marry you—when—” He halted.
“When?” she prompted, almost involuntarily.
“When you see things differently—and when I can go around the world a free man, not a fugitive from Barney and his gunmen and the police.”
Again Maggie was silent for a moment. It was as if she were trying to press out of her mind what he had said about loving her. Truly this was, indeed, different from their previous meetings. Before, there had almost invariably been a defiant attitude, a dispute, a quarrel. Now she had no desire to quarrel.
Finally she said with an effort to be that self-controlled person which she had established as her model: