So now about the child?" she ended
abruptly, leaning forward again with the same look of eager solicitude
in her eyes.
"Well, about the child--our child--though, perhaps, I prefer to say MY
child," he began, with a certain brutal frankness. "I'll tell you. But
first, I don't want you to talk about BUYING your information of me.
If I haven't told you anything before, it's because I didn't think you
oughter know. If I didn't trust the child to YOU, it's because I didn't
think you could go shashaying about with a child that was three years
old when I"--he stopped and wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand--"made an honest woman of you--I think that's what they call it."
"But," she said eagerly, ignoring the insult, "I could have hidden it
where no one but myself would have known it. I could have sent it to
school and visited it as a relation."
"Yes," he said curtly, "like all women, and then blurted it out some day
and made it worse."
"But," she said desperately, "even THEN, suppose I had been willing to
take the shame of it! I have taken more!"
"But I didn't intend that you should," he said roughly.
"You are very careful of my reputation," she returned scornfully.
"Not by a d----d sight," he burst out; "but I care for HIS! I'm not
goin' to let any man call him a bastard!"
Callous as she had become even under this last cruel blow, she could not
but see something in his coarse eyes she had never seen before; could
not but hear something in his brutal voice she had never heard before!
Was it possible that somewhere in the depths of his sordid nature he had
his own contemptible sense of honor? A hysterical feeling came over her
hitherto passive disgust and scorn, but it disappeared with his next
sentence in a haze of anxiety.
Pages:
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106