"Yes, I do," said she. "Don't tell me! I don't want to know." And he strode on, she keeping beside him. "I can't let you believe me different from what I am," replied she. "Not you. I supposed you guessed." "Now I'll always think of it--whenever I look at you. . . . I simply can't believe it. . . . You spoke of it as if you weren't ashamed." "I'm not ashamed," she said. "Not before you. There isn't anything I've done that I wouldn't be willing to have you know. I'd have told you, except that I didn't want to recall it. You know that nobody can live without getting dirty. The thing is to want to be clean--and to try to get clean afterward--isn't it?" "Yes," he admitted, as if he had not been hearing. "I wish you hadn't told me. I'll always see it and feel it when I look at you." "I want you to," said she. "I couldn't love you as I do if I hadn't gone through a great deal." "But it must have left its stains upon you," said he. Again he stopped short in the street, faced her at the curb, with the crowd hurrying by and jostling them. "Tell me about it!" he commanded. She shook her head. "I couldn't." To have told would have been like tearing open closed and healed wounds. Also it would have seemed whining--and she had utter contempt for whining. "I'll answer any question, but I can't just go on and tell." "You deliberately went and did--that?" "Yes." "Haven't you any excuse, any defense?" She might have told him about Burlingham dying and the need of money to save him. She might have told him about Etta--her health going--her mind made up to take to the streets, with no one to look after her. She might have made it all a moving and a true tale--of self-sacrifice for the two people who had done most for her. But it was not in her simple honest nature to try to shift blame. So all she said was: "No, Rod." "And you didn't want to kill yourself first?" "No. I wanted to live. I was dirty--and I wanted to be clean. I was hungry--and I wanted food. I was cold--that was the worst. I was cold, and I wanted to get warm. And--I had been married--but I couldn't tell even you about that--except--after a woman's been through what I went through then, nothing in life has any real terror or horror for her." He looked at her long. "I don't understand," he finally said. "Come on. Let's go back to the hotel." She walked beside him, making no attempt to break his gloomy silence. They went up to their room and she sat on the lounge by the window. He lit a cigarette and half sat, half lay, upon the bed. After a long time he said with a bitter laugh, "And I was so sure you were a good woman!" "I don't feel bad," she ventured timidly. "Am I?" "Do you mean to tell me," he cried, sitting up, "that you don't think anything of those things?" "Life can be so hard and cruel, can make one do so many----" "But don't you realize that what you've done is the very worst thing a woman can do?"