“What of it?”
“How could I ask her to marry a jobless, half-lunged derelict?”
“Have you asked her?”
He was silent.
“Ban, does she know why you’re here?”
“Oh, yes; she knows.”
“How bitter and desolate your voice sounds when you say that! And you want me to believe that she knows and still doesn’t come to you?”
“She doesn’t know that I’m—ill,” he said, hating himself for the necessity of pretense with Camilla Van Arsdale.
“Then I shall tell her.”
“No,” he controverted with finality, “I won’t allow it.”