“Never mind about Adam!” said Polly Pendleton. “Don’t I know! If you were just a case of an average Johnnie that had money and no brains, I’d maybe take you on and jolly well separate you. Such things have happened. But here you are with no money and a lot of brains. Excuse me, my friend, but you don’t seem to just qualify for running a theatrical company. Besides—I like you a lot. I told you that before. But when I sing, ‘You’re the only man for me,’ that’s what I _don’t_ mean—what I _never_ mean. Can’t you understand that? I wish you’d never seen me.” “I didn’t know there could be a woman like you in all the world—I didn’t know what a woman really meant.” “It’d be fine to have a man really believe in you;” half sobbing now. “It’d be mighty fine to listen to that line of talk, even if you couldn’t believe in it.” Polly Pendleton shrank back into her corner of the sofa, and wrung her little white hands together; but finally she suddenly turned to him once more, one knee bent, her foot under her, as she faced him on the sofa at last. “There may be women who could break a man and throw away the pieces for the fun of it. Nix on the vamp for little Polly. Oh, dear! I don’t want to talk. I’m tired. What made you come here at all? The trouble with you is, you don’t know what an angel face is. You think I’m the way I look. I’m not!” Polly was sobbing freely now into the corner of her skirt. “I’m not, I tell you! Don’t you know—and I’d rather have told that to anybody in all the world than you—you’re so damned honest!” He made no answer at all, and she went on. “You’ve been such a boob that you haven’t done anything wrong. You’ve got your education ahead of you. I’m twenty-six years old, and I know more than you will when you’re a hundred and twenty-six. You don’t need to have a house fall on you, do you? Come now! I don’t”—and here, in spite of all, she laughed through her unwilling tears—“I don’t want your little old thirty-five cents at all! Take it and go on, and save the country, friend.” David Joslin sat for a long time. “Sometimes things are hard to figure out,” said he at last. “Yes!” said Polly Pendleton in a low voice. “Don’t I know?” There was no answer save his white-knuckled hands. After a time she hitched up the other foot on the sofa, and sat, her arms about her knees, staring at him that way, her eyes gleaming in the dim light, impulsive still as a child herself—as indeed she was always to remain. “Listen!” said she. “I’ve got an idea. Come now—you seem rather like a priest to me—it didn’t seem wrong for me to tell you things. Will you make a trade, honor bright?” “If I gave you my word,” said David Joslin soberly, “I’d keep it.” “If you’ll promise to go on and do what you said you’d do—your education—your college—I’ll agree to quit this business in about two months, and when I do I’ll go into the Red Cross.”