“Oh, you’re no child, Sheila,” he snarled. “Don’t play the ingenue with me. You know what I mean.”
Her voice grew years older as she answered, icily: “When you say I’m no child, it makes me think I understand what you mean. But I can’t believe that I do.”
“Why?”
“Well, you’ve known my father and mother so long and they like you so much, and—well—it doesn’t seem possible that you would mean me any harm.”
No amount of heroics could have shamed him like that. His eyes rolled like a cornered wolf’s. He shut them, and with one deep breath seemed to absolve himself and purify his soul. He mumbled, “I—I want you to—to marry me, Sheila!”
Sheila seemed to breathe a less stifling air. She felt sorry for him now; but he asked a greater charity than she could grant. She answered: “Oh, I couldn’t marry anybody; not now. I don’t want to marry—at all.” She sought for the least-insulting explanation. “It—it would hurt me professionally.”
His self-esteem blinded him to her tact. He persisted: “We could be married secretly. No one needs to know.”
She protested, “You can’t keep such a thing secret.”
He retorted: “Of course you can. They never found out that Sonia Eccleston was married to her manager.”
“She never was!”