He said that he didn’t with so much fervor that something perilously close to a smile touched her lips. He told her who he was, and the information appeared to surprise her, so it is safe to assume she knew it already. He pleaded in extenuation that they had been neighbors for a year; but she had not, apparently, been aware of this either; and the snub completed his discomfiture.
“I—I was so anxious to know you,” he said, miserably. “That was the beginning—”
“It is a perfectly horrid thing to say,” she said, indignantly. “Do you suppose, because you are a public character, you are privileged to speak to anybody?”
He attempted to say he didn’t, but she went on: “Of course that is not a palliation of your offence. It is a dreadful condition of affairs if a woman cannot go out alone—”
“Please don’t say that!” he cried.
“I must. It is a terrible comment on modern social conditions,” she repeated, shaking her pretty head. “A woman who permits it—especially a woman who is obliged to support herself—for if I were not poor I should be driving here in my brougham, and you know it!—oh, it is a hideously common thing for a girl to do!” Opening her book, she appeared to be deeply interested in it. But the book was upside down.
Glancing at him a moment later, she was apparently surprised to find him still standing beside her. However, he had noted two things in that moment of respite: she held the book upside down, and on the title-page was written a signature that he knew—“Marlitt.”
“Under the circumstances,” she said, coldly, “do you think it decent to continue this conversation?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “I’m a decent sort of fellow, or you would have divined the contrary long ago; and there is a humiliating explanation that I owe you.”
“You owe me every explanation,” she said, “but I am generous enough to spare you the humiliation.”