“Shall I make an anchor on your arm?”
The girl drew back.
“You are afraid it will hurt you,” he said, half in scorn.
She looked on his arm where the blood was mingling with the ink.
“No,” she said, resolutely,“I’m not afraid it will hurt me, but the mark, will it not last always?”
“To be sure it will. Oh! you will be a beauty—you will shine in ball-rooms with those fair white arms uncovered! Such stuff as this would deface them!”
“No such thing! you like to tease me, and that’s the reason you talk so. How wild you are! I’m not at all afraid of the pain—nor of marring my beauty. You know, in the first place, I have no beauty, and I don’t want any either.”
“Tut—but I’m not going to flatter you. Do you really want to know what this other mark here is?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a cross, Ella.”