Upon George the effect of Ellen's words was different. He leaned farther in, his neck surging with blood, his little eyes growing round and fierce. "What do you mean, Ellen? Has that fellow been insulting you?"
Ellen was sobbing again and swaying herself back and forth. "Oh, George, I'm so humiliated I feel like I could never hold up my head again!"
George's strong fist was clenching and unclenching. "What did that fellow do to you?"
"It was my own fault!" Ellen wailed. "He was perfectly right: I knew what he was after all along. Any girl would know. But I was so sure I could hold my own all right. Oh, what fools girls are!" Ellen went off into another doleful wail. "Of course he had given hints before and I had always let on I didn't understand him. But tonight he came right out with it. He put it straight up to me and when I wouldn't, oh, I can't tell you the awful things he said!"
George breathed hard. "So he's that kind of a scoundrel, is he?"
"And, George," Ellen wept, "I'm not that kind of a girl! Honest I'm not! Am I, Rosie?"
Rosie, frozen and miserable, with a sickening realization of how things were going to end, was still looking straight ahead. She wanted to answer Ellen's question with a truthful, "I am sure I don't know what kind of a girl you are!" but something restrained her and she said nothing.
Ellen seemed hardly to expect an answer, for she went on immediately: "I've been a fool, George, an awful fool; I see that now; but I've always been straight—honest I have! You can ask everybody that knows me!"
George was breathing with difficulty. "I'd like to get at that Hawes fellow for about five minutes! Will he be in his office tomorrow, around noon?"
Ellen wrung protesting hands. "No, George, you won't do any such thing! I won't let you! You'll only get pulled in! Besides, he was right! Leastways, he was in some things! Of course I knew what he was always hinting about but honest, George, I didn't know the rest!"