"Then I'll stay shut up.... You may as well understand me one time as another. If I marry you I'll marry you when I'm ready, and not until I'm ready. I don't want to marry you. I don't want to marry anybody.... But there are limits to what one can endure. To marry you might be more endurable than not to marry you.... I've seen enough of life to realize that. I couldn't have realized it a year ago. I'm talking frankly to you, Mr. Cantor." "I agree with you," he said, ironically. "You seem to think I am desirable as a wife. But you don't love me. You have your reasons for wanting me." "Undoubtedly." "Would you care to tell me what they are?" "I like excitement," he said, with a grim laugh. "With you as my wife I would never have to seek it." "My father is wealthy. I have social position here.... I suppose, if we are to think about this as barter and sale, that you have something to offset that--besides your presence and--abilities." He drew himself up and stared at her. "I--" he began, and checked himself. He had been on the point of a disclosure, she knew, driven by vanity. He shrugged his shoulders. "You would not be the loser," he said. "In case you ever leave America," she said. "What do you mean?" "In war-times," she said, "I have read that spies are shot." He laughed. "You have that silly idea yet? Well, so long as you don't prattle about it, no harm is done.... And I'll see to it you don't prattle." "I've thought of offering to marry you if you would release my father. But that idea didn't appeal. I knew you wouldn't keep your promise ... so long as he was useful to you." "The American family system is a puzzle to me," he said. "You arrange these things better--in Germany?" "You would be impossible in Germany or France or Russia." "Yes," she said. "I am American.... That's the terrible truth. I'm American, and I have a traitor for a father and a spy of the enemy for a possible husband. Oh," she said, with a sudden flux of despair, "why should this thing happen to me--to me?" He offered no sympathy. "Anyhow," he said, "you have had to send for me.... And I came. I'm patient, and you are worth being patient for." His eyes glowed as they rested upon her, perceiving her slender, ardent youth, the fire, the ability to live, the reckless charm of her. "Let it rest so. We will go on as before." And so it had been. She recalled that conversation now as the music of bands and the voice of the multitude arose to her ears. So it had been--and there was no change. His patience and persistence were unabated; her power of resistance was undiminished. He turned to her suddenly. "America imagines she can stand up against Germany's armies with those." He pointed downward. "And these men of the Middle West and the West are the best you can give. Look at them."