"That sounds ever so much better," she admitted, glancing up into his face. "I have never enjoyed being scolded, as though I were a child who had done wrong. Besides, I am quite convinced in this case I have done precisely right. I think you would admit it also if you only had patience to hear my story. I know exactly what I intend doing, or I should never have given all that money away. I have an engagement."
"An engagement? Where? Is there another troupe playing here?"
She shrugged her shoulders, her hands clasped.
"No, not in the sense you mean; not the legitimate. I am going to appear at the Gayety."
Winston stood grasping the back of the chair, staring straight at her, his body motionless. For an instant he was conscious of a sudden revulsion of feeling, a vague distrust of her true character, a doubt of the real nature of this perverse personality. Such a resolution on her part shocked him with its recklessness. Either she did not in the least appreciate what such action meant, or else she woefully lacked in moral judgment. Slowly, those shadowed dark eyes were uplifted to his face, as if his very silence had awakened alarm. Yet she merely smiled at the gravity of his look, shaking her dark hair in coquettish disdain.
"Again you apparently disapprove," she said with pretence of carelessness. "How easily I succeed in shocking you to-day! Really, a stranger might imagine I was under particular obligations to ask your permission for the mere privilege of living. We have known each other by sight for all of two weeks, and yet your face already speaks of dictation. Evidently you do not like the Gayety."
"No; do you?"
"I?" she replied doubtfully, with a slight movement of the body more expressive than words. "There are times when necessity, rather than taste, must control the choice. But truly, since you ask the question, I do not like the Gayety. It is far too noisy, too dirty, too gaudy, and too decidedly primitive. But then, beggars may not always be choosers, you know. I am no bright, scintillating 'star'; I am not even a mining engineer possessing a bank account in Denver; I am merely an unknown professional actress, temporarily stranded, and the good angel of the Gayety offers me twenty dollars a week. That is my answer."
The young man flushed to the roots of his fair hair, his teeth meeting firmly.
"There is no 'good angel' of the Gayety—the very atmosphere of that place would soil an angel's wing," he exclaimed hotly. "Besides, you are not driven by necessity to any such choice. There is another way out. As you gently suggested, I am a mining engineer possessing a bank account at Denver. I will most gladly draw a sight draft to-morrow, and pay your expenses back to that city, if you will only accept my offer. Is this fair?"