“Yes.”
“Knowing what he has been, what he may be again?”
“Knowing what he is,” she corrected.
“Will girls never get over the folly of marrying men to reform them?” he flung out impatiently.
“I’m not marrying him to reform him—that is, if I’m marrying him at all, which isn’t likely. He does not need reforming.”
“How do you know he won’t slide back into his vice?” He answered his own query. “You can’t know. There’s no way of knowing.”
“He won’t.” She said it quietly, with absolute conviction.
Her attitude tremendously irritated him. It was a reflection on all the copybook virtues that had made him what he was. “Are you waiting for this tramp, this drug fiend, to make up his mind whether he wants to marry you or not?”
There was a spark of anger in her eye. She would not modify even his phrasing. It could stand as he put it.
“Yes.”