“I preferred not to do it,” he returned dully.
“Just so! And your father walked all over you, and took your earnings, and imposed on you, and ground you down so that at twenty-one you flew into the arms of that little Richards slut. And now you come yowling around me for sympathy——”
“I haven’t—I’m not—‘yowling around you for sympathy.’”
“You needn’t think I haven’t any brains! You needn’t add that to your boorish insults! You came here to-night, with your cheap peasant wife dead and those silly love notes, thinking to stir up something of our kid romance—ask me to marry you, perhaps. As if I would marry you—you! Oh, my God, what an insult! I could call the police and have you ejected for it, right this minute!”
“Oh, Bernie, please be reasonable! I haven’t asked you to marry me! I——”
“You don’t need to add falsehood to it all. If I’d marry you to-morrow, you’d feel highly complimented, because there’s nothing in Paris to equal me. Isn’t that so?”
Nathan hesitated to say “No,” and felt that “Yes” was falsehood.
“Answer me!”
“I hardly know, Bernie. I——”
But Bernie was obsessed with her own assumption.