“Yes, if I may.”
“Why not? It’s your story.”
“About—me?”
“It’s the story of Eris. I call it ‘The Gilded Apple.’ It’s sob-stuff. You begin to whimper after the first five hundred words. Then it degenerates into a snivel, and finally culminates in one heart-shattering sob.”
She had begun to understand his flippancy. And now her smile glimmered responsive to his.
“If it’s really about me,” she said, “why is the story tragic?”
“I gave a tragic turn to our adventure,” he explained.
“How?”
“I made myself out a bad sort. That was the situation,—a nice girl out o’ luck, a rotter, a quick etching in of the Park situation—then through remorseless logic I finish you in the spotlight. You’re done for; but I drift away through darkness, complacent, furtive, dangerous,—the bacteriological symbol of cosmic corruption,—the Eternal Cad.”
From the first moment he had spoken to her in the Park the night before, his every word had fascinated her.