"I'll tell you what you did," the woman blazed out, standing so close to him now that he felt her fierce breath on his face. "Shortly before you left you were taken sick at the bank, or fainted, or something like it, and didn't even tell me about it. I read it in the paper. I was beneath your high-and-mighty notice--dirt under your feet. But the next day you went driving with Irene Mitchell. You passed within ten feet of me at the crossing of Whitehall Street and Marietta. You saw me as plainly as you see me now, and yet you turned your head away. You thought"--here an actual oath escaped the girl's lips--"you were afraid of what that stuck-up fool of a woman would think. She knows about us--she's heard; she recognized me. I saw it in her eyes. She deliberately sneered at me, and you--_you contemptible puppy!_--you didn't even raise your hat to me after all your sickening, gushing protestations. I want to tell you right now, Dick Mostyn, that you can't walk over me. I'm ready for you, and I'm tired of this whole business." He was wisely silent. She was pale and quivering all over. He wondered how he could ever have thought her attractive or pretty. Her face was as repulsive as death could have made it. Aimlessly she picked up a cigarette only to crush it in her fingers as she went on. "Answer me, Dick Mostyn, why did you treat me that way?" "My fainting at the bank was nothing," he faltered. "I didn't think it was of enough importance to mention, and as for my not speaking to you on the street, you know that you and I have positively agreed that our relations were to be unknown. People have talked about us so much, anyway, that I did not want to make it worse than it already is. Besides--now, you must be reasonable. The last time I paid you a thousand dollars in a lump you agreed that you would not bother me any more. You were to do as you wished, and I was free to do the same, and yet, already--" _"Bother you! bother you!_ Is that the way to talk to me? Am I the scum of creation all at once? Didn't you make me what I am? Haven't you sworn that you care more for me than any one else? I was pretty, according to you. I was lovely. I was bright--brighter and better-read than any of your dirty, stuck-up set. You said you'd rather be with me than with any one else, but since then you've begun to think of marrying that creature for her money. Oh, I know that's it--you couldn't love a cold, haughty stick like she is. You are not made that way, but you _do_ love money; you want what she's got, and if you are let alone you will marry her." "I have no such idea, Marie," he said, falteringly. "You are a liar, a deliberate, sneaking liar. Money is your god, and always will be."