Her troubled eyes went over his thin, sunbaked face with its touch, of bitterness, and she did not find it possible to dismiss the subject without giving him a chance to set himself right.
“You can’t be as bad as they say. You are not, are you?” she asked, naively.
“What do y’u think?” he responded, coolly.
She flushed angrily at what she accepted as his insolence. “A man of any decency would have jumped at the chance to explain.”
“But if there is nothing to explain?”
“You are then guilty.”
Their eyes met, and neither of them quailed.
“If I pleaded not guilty would y’u believe me?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. How could I when it is known by everybody? And yet—”
He smiled. “Why should I trouble y’u, then, with explanations? I reckon we’ll let it go at guilty.”