"What's the use of talking about it? I tell you, I haven't got the money."
Then he said (I never knew a man who could so persist about a thing on which he had set his heart):
"Now, look here, Nora, I've got more money than is decent for any one person to have, and I want to spend it on you. I want to give you things—comforts and luxuries and all the pretty things a girl like you ought to have. If you could see yourself now, you'd realize what a difference even clothes make. And so with other things. I want to take hold of you and make you over. I never wanted to do anything so much in my life before. Now you're going to be a good girl, aren't you, and not deny me the pleasure—the real joy it gives me to do things for you, dear little girl?"
By this time I was nearly crying, but I set my teeth together, and determined not to be won over to something I knew was not right.
"You told me once," I said, "that all any one had ever wanted of you was your money—your 'dirty money,' you called it; and now, just because I won't take it from you, you get angry with me."
"Well, but, confound it! I didn't mean you then."
"Oh, yes, you did, too; because you said I'd be sending for more money in a week, and you said that I was made to have it, and men would give—"
He put a stop to my too vivid recollections.
"But, child, I had no idea then of the kind of girl you were,"—he lowered his voice, and added tenderly, he was trying so hard to have his way!—"of the exceptional, wonderful little girl you are."
"But I wouldn't be exceptional or wonderful," I protested, "if I took your money. I'd be common. No; I'm not going to let people say you keep me!"