"Suppose I'd died here," she mused. "I very nearly did."
"So I should judge."
"What a scandal there'd have been! And what a text for the pious! 'The wages of sin is death.' D'you believe that, Bobs?"
"It's a useful bogey to scare people who are more timid than they are wicked."
"I'm not timid," she proclaimed. "And I don't feel particularly wicked. Only anxious over how this is going to turn out."
"What did you do it for, Mona?" he burst out painfully.
She gave him a sidelong glance. "Oh, I don't know. Boredom. And he begged me so. Poor Sid! He does love me."
"The dirty scoundrel! If he loved you, would he——"
"Of course he would!" she broke in, with impatient contempt. "Don't indulge in cheap melodrama. It's because people are in love that they take risks like this."
"Then you love him," said Osterhout dolorously.