"What else can we do?" asked Mollie June, searching his face.
"It's fairly simple," he said, a little bitterly. "Not easy, but simple. I will write a brief, plain account of the whole affair--the impersonation--from beginning to end, and send for a reporter and give it to him. That will end everything. I will sit down now at that desk and write it and call for a man and give it to him while Aunt Mary thinks we are still talking--unless you tell me not to."
"Would you do that?"
"Indeed I will!"
He rose to his feet. He meant it, and she saw that he meant it. To be forced in this thing was, in fact, even less to his liking perhaps than to hers.
Standing, he saw the roses at his feet. He stooped and picked them up and handed them to her.
"You'll let me give you these?" he said, his manner more determined than lover-like. "I saw them from the elevator as I was coming up here with Aunt Mary. They were so like you that I could not help buying them and bringing them to you."
She accepted them passively, looking up at him. Perhaps she liked him determined rather than lover-like.
"I am not giving you up," he went on gravely. "But you will go away somewhere with Aunt Mary, and I will go back to Riceville. I have my contract for the rest of this year at least. And if you will wait a few years--you will want to wait and rest a while,--I will come back and win you in my own right."
She did not answer but looked up at him, still searching his face.