“I think Dan Blair is excellent stuff,” Gordon said.
“He is the greenest, youngest, most ridiculous infant,” she exclaimed with irritation, and he laughed.
“His money is old enough to walk, however, isn’t it, Lily?” She made an angry gesture.
“I expected you’d say something loathsome.”
Her companion met her eyes directly. She left her chair and came and sat down beside him on the small sofa. As he did not move, or look at her, but regarded his cigarette with interest, she leaned close to him and whispered: “Gordon, try to be nice and decent. Try to forget yourself. Don’t you see what a wonderful chance it is for me, and that, as far as you and I are concerned, it can’t go on?”
The face of the man by her side grew somber. The charm this woman had for him had never lessened since the day when he told her he loved her, long before his marriage, and they were both too poor.
“We have always been too poor, and Edith is jealous of me every day and hour of her life. Can’t you be generous?”
He rose and stood over her, looking down at her beautiful form and her somewhat softened face, but his eyes were hard and his face very pale.
“You had better go, Gordon,” she said slowly; “you had better go....”
Then, as he obeyed her and went like a flash as far as the door, she followed him and whispered softly: “If you’re really only jealous, I can forgive you.”