I saw I must be unreserved with him. “Part of it,” I replied. “The rest is—she would not take it from me.”
The old man smiled cynically. “Have you tried?” he inquired.
“If I had tried and failed, she would have been on the alert for an indirect attempt.”
“Try her, young man,” said he, laughing. “In this day there are few people anywhere who’d refuse any sum from anybody for anything. And a woman—and a New York woman—and a New York fashionable woman—and a daughter of old Ellersly—she’ll take it as a baby takes the breast.”
“She would not take it,” said I.
My tone, though I strove to keep angry protest out of it, because I needed him, caused him to draw back instantly. “I beg your pardon,” said he. “I forgot for the moment that I was talking to a man young enough still to have youth’s delusions about women. You’ll learn that they’re human, that it’s from them we men inherit our weaknesses. However, let’s assume that she won’t take it. Why won’t she take your money? What is there about it that repels Ellersly’s daughter, brought up in the sewers of fashionable New York—the sewers, sir?”
“She does not love me,” I answered.
“I have hurt you,” he said, quickly, in great distress at having compelled me to expose my secret wound.
“The wound does not ache the worse,” said I, “for my showing it—to you.” And that was the truth. I looked over toward Dawn Hill, whose towers could just be seen. “We live there.” I pointed. “She is—like a guest in my house.”
When I glanced at him again, his face betrayed a feeling which I doubt if anyone had thought him capable in many a year. “I see that you love her,” he said, gently as a mother.