“I go to jail,” he said after her significant pause, his eyes downcast.
“You do worse. You steal from yourself. You steal not money but much more, your innocence. With fifty or five dollars you have yourself a new name bought—thief! No money buys that word back. It makes one long, bloody cut into your soul. Before it gets well you have a very long time in the hospital of work—if you have the good luck to find that hospital. Before you have paid back to yourself that fifty dollars worth of self-respecting, you have great shame and sorrow mit yourself.”
Max did not speak, and she busied herself in making orderly the book-littered table.
“When you steal to eat I call you not a thief; hungry creatures are crazy. Ant I judge not anybody. Yet I think so long as you are afraid of thiefs you have still some robbing in your heart. What you think?”
Max fidgeted in his chair, rose, walked to the window, and looked out into the sunshine for a second, then he turned back to her, looking fearlessly in her eyes. “Last night I was a thief! But today—now—I am not. The wound is there, in my soul certainly; and I’ll carry the scar always, I know that. But there’ll never be another.”
She caught his hand in both her own and her smile was good to see. “Goot! I belief you. Have no more fear. By me you stay, get well, go to school mebbe. Nicht wahr?”
“If I stayed at home I would have graduated from the high school in four months. I’d like to go again. But first I must earn some money.”
“You need no money mit me. Before you are strong to work you can study.”
“You are so good to me. Yet I need some money right away. I—”
“Iss it much? I can lend you some.”