His eyes rose to meet hers.
“I want you to stay. We can work together. I’m not inventing work for you. It’s there. It has been there for the last two or three years.”
He spoke very gently, and yet some raw surface within her was touched and hurt. Her mouth quivered with sensitive cynicism.
“A woman, when she is alone, must get money—somehow. It is bitter bread that many of us have to eat.”
“I did not mean to make it taste bitter.”
Her mouth and eyes softened instantly.
“You? No. You are different. And that——”
“Well?”
“And that makes it more difficult, in a way.”
“Why should it?”