“You are a queer sort of Willy,” she replied. “I don’t believe you and me can ever rightly understand each other.”
“I think I understand you,” Brainard laughed; “you want Krutzmacht’s money—that is quite intelligible! And you may not think so, but I am sorry for you—I would really like to help you out—get a better position for you!”
“But you won’t divide!”
“Never—all or nothing.”
“Do you know where I’m going to-night when I leave your swell little house? Over on Second Avenue into a third-class hotel where my mother and I get along with one bedroom between us. Hollinger don’t pay any big salaries!”
“I am sorry.”
“Krutzmacht treated me like most men treat women they’ve got cheap. I had no reason to be loyal to him, as I told you.”
“Unless,” Brainard suggested lightly, “you happened to be his wife!”
Miss Walters ignored the implication and continued explanatorily:
“When we lost you at Vera Cruz, and the railroad men I was working for had no more use for me, I was down and out. There didn’t seem to be anything for anybody from Krutzmacht’s money except what the Germans got and you! So I went into the show that I told you of. But it seems there was a good deal more property I didn’t know about—he was always close mouthed. You were clever enough to find that mine and keep it for yourself. . . . It wasn’t until you struck New York that anybody heard about it. Then the papers and the magazines were full of it and of you and of all the money you were throwing away on a theater.”