“Gee!” said O’Leary.
Neither spoke for a long moment.
“It is cold-blooded,” he said, at last.
“It’s a bargain,” she said abruptly, shrugging her shoulders. “He wants me; he’s getting what he wants. If he sees it that way, why, it’s square enough.”
“Does he see it that way?”
“I’ve been honest. I’ve told him what I tell you. It’s understood like that between us.”
“Why do you even hesitate?” he said.
She stared beyond him.
“It would be hard,” she said simply, and looked at him with half-closed eyes.
He was so astonished at the disclosure that she had made that he felt like repeating his questions, to convince himself that what she had told him could be true, that this girl manicurist from Joey Shine’s barber shop could, for a nod of her head, leap forward a dozen generations.