"She needs you. She loves you. If you could have seen her all Sunday night when we—when she was afraid you had been ruined. You don't know how she cares. I didn't. I was terribly mistaken—unjust. You mustn't let her go off and marry some one she doesn't care about, like Boskirk, the way Dolly did."
"But I must do what is right for me too," he said desperately, moved by the radiance in her eyes that seemed to flow out and envelope him irresistibly. "I have a right to love too, to find a woman who knows what love means—"
"Don't—don't," she said, turning away miserably, too young to make the pretense of not understanding him.
"Listen, Drina," he said, catching her hand. "I am up against a decision, the greatest decision in my life, which means whether I am to have the right to my own self-respect and yours and others. One way means money, an easy way to everything people want in this world, and no blame attached except what I myself might feel. The other means standing on my own feet, no favors, taking a loss of thousands of dollars, and a fight of perhaps five, ten years to get where I am now. Which would you do? No, you don't even need to answer," he said joyfully, carried away by the look in her eyes as she swung fearlessly around. "I know you."
In his fervor he caught her hand and pressed it against his heart. "Drina dear, you ring true, true as a bell. You, I know, will understand whatever I do." He was rushing on when suddenly a thought stopped him. If he did what he had planned, what right would he have to hope of marrying her even after years of toil? He dropped her hands, his face going so blank that, forgetting the mingled joy and terror his words had brought her, she cried:
"Bojo—what's wrong—what are you thinking of?"
He turned away, shaking his head, drawing a deep breath.
But at this moment, before Patsie could escape, Doris came down the stairs and directly to him.
"Bojo—I've been so worried—why didn't you answer my letters? And why didn't you meet me?"
She threw her arms about his neck, gazing anxiously into his eyes. He had a blurred vision of Patsie, shrinking and white, turning from the sight of the embrace, as he stammered explanations. Luckily Drake himself broke the tension with an unexpected appearance and a bluff—