"Can't you put yourself in my place, Joe? It's always been taken for granted that I'm to marry Nick. And the moment he comes around everybody else avoids me as if I were poison. I was sick of it. And when he showed up this time it was the same old story. A man would as soon sign his own death warrant as ask me for a dance. You know how it is?"
He nodded, still at sea, but with a light beginning to dawn in his little eyes.
"I'm only a girl, Joe. I have all the weakness of other girls. I don't want to be locked up in a cage just because I—love one man!"
The avowal made Joe blink. It was the second time that day that he had been placed in an astonishing scene. But some of his old cunning remained to him.
"Nell," he said suddenly, rising from his chair and going to her. "What are you trying to do to me? Pull the wool over my eyes?"
It was too much for Nelly Lebrun. She knew that she could not face him without betraying her guilt and therefore she did not attempt it. She whirled and flung herself on her bed, face down, and began to sob violently, suppressing the sounds. And so she waited.
Presently a hand touched her shoulder lightly.
"Go away," cried Nelly in a choked voice. "I hate you, Joe Rix. You're like all the rest!"
His knee struck the floor with a soft thud.
"Come on, Nell. Don't be hard on me. I thought you were stringing me a little. But if you're playing straight, tell me what you want?"