"No," said she. "I don't. . . . I'm sorry you didn't understand. I thought you did--not the details, but in a general sort of way. I didn't mean to deceive you. That would have seemed to me much worse than anything I did." "I might have known! I might have known!" he cried--rather theatrically, though sincerely withal--for Mr. Spenser was a diligent worker with the tools of the play-making trade. "I learned who you were as soon as I got home the night I left you in Carrolton. They had been telephoning about you to the village. So I knew about you." "About my mother?" asked she. "Is that what you mean?" "Oh, you need not look so ashamed," said he, graciously, pityingly. "I am not ashamed," said she. But she did not tell him that her look came from an awful fear that he was about to make her ashamed of him. "No, I suppose you aren't," he went on, incensed by this further evidence of her lack of a good woman's instincts. "I really ought not to blame you. You were born wrong--born with the moral sense left out." "Yes, I suppose so," said she, wearily. "If only you had lied to me--told me the one lie!" cried he. "Then you wouldn't have destroyed my illusion. You wouldn't have killed my love." She grew deathly white; that was all. "I don't mean that I don't love you still," he hurried on. "But not in the same way. That's killed forever." "Are there different ways of loving?" she asked. "How can I give you the love of respect and trust--now?" "Don't you trust me--any more?" "I couldn't. I simply couldn't. It was hard enough before on account of your birth. But now---- Trust a woman who had been a--a--I can't speak the word. Trust you? You don't understand a man." "No, I don't." She looked round drearily. Everything in ruins. Alone again. Outcast. Nowhere to go but the streets--the life that seemed the only one for such as she. "I don't understand people at all. . . . Do you want me to go?" She had risen as she asked this. He was beside her instantly. "Go!" he cried. "Why I couldn't get along without you." "Then you love me as I love you," Said she, putting her arms round him. "And that's all I want. I don't want what you call respect. I couldn't ever have hoped to get that, being born as I was--could I? Anyhow, it doesn't seem to me to amount to much. I can't help it, Rod--that's the way I feel. So just love me--do with me whatever you will, so long as it makes you happy. And I don't need to be trusted. I couldn't think of anybody but you." He felt sure of her again, reascended to the peak of the moral mountain. "You understand, we can never get married. We can never have any children." "I don't mind. I didn't expect that. We can _love_--can't we?" He took her face between his hands. "What an exquisite face it is," he said, "soft and smooth! And what clear, honest eyes! Where is _it?_ Where _is_ it? It _must_ be there!" "What, Rod?" "The--the dirt."