"Crete, of all women in the world! You, with your temperament! With an idealism that I and most other men couldn't touch with a ten-foot pole—and yet you'd work out a proposition like that! I didn't know that you saw through Glover. I made that excuse for you, that you were too unsophisticated to see through him. But sizing him up for an adventurer, you frame up a contract that——Why, I'll be hanged if I can believe it, Crete. I simply can't believe it."
She made no defense, and he went on in the same dazed tone.
"Go out on the street and pick up the first girl you meet and bring her in here. If I should make love to her and try to get her to marry me, and succeed, I'd have a much better chance of happiness than this adventure would ever give you. For, at least, I'd be swimming with both hands free. Now listen." He seemed to become suddenly aware of her presence again. "When I fall in love, I'll begin to think about getting married. But I'm not going to be hurried into it by you or anybody else. And when I decide to marry, not you nor anybody else shall stand in my way."
She reached for him with a convulsive gesture. "Clinton, do you mean that? Do you mean that nobody should?"
"I pledge you my word. But this has got to be a bargain. You have demonstrated that you know how to make one. Now don't you ever let that man cross this threshold again."
"I've got to, Clint. After what happened this afternoon, I've got to let him come—for a while."
"Why?"
"Sit down and let me tell you about it. I'll have to tell you, or it will eat up my heart. But the thing will seem incredible."
"Not to me. I think after what I've just heard that I can believe anything."
"Well, you remember that I told you he had promised to read me something that he had written?"