The Dust Flower Part 24

He came down the rest of the stairs till he stood on the lowest step.

She advanced toward him pleadingly.

"I was--I was trying to get out."

"What for?"

"I--I--I must get away."

"Well, even so; is this the way to do it? I thought someone was tearing the house down. It woke me up."

"I was goin' this way because--because I didn't want you to know what'd become of me."

"Yes, and have you on my mind."

"I hoped I'd be takin' myself off your mind."

"If you want to take yourself off my mind there's a perfectly simple means of doing it."

"I'll do anything--but take money."

"And taking money is the only thing I ask of you."

"I can't. It'd--it'd--shame me."

"Shame you? What nonsense!"

She reflected fast. "There's two ways a woman can take money from a man. The man may love her and marry her; or perhaps he don't marry her, but loves her just the same. Then she can take it; but when----"

"When she only renders him a--a great service----"

"Ah, but that's just what I didn't do. You said you wanted me to send you to the devil--and now you ain't a-goin' to go."

He grew excited. "But, good Lord, girl, you don't expect me to go to the devil just to keep my word to you."

"I don't want you to do anything just to keep your word to me," she returned, fiercely. "I only want you to let me get away."

He came down the remaining step, beginning to pace back and forth as he always did when approaching the condition he called "going off the hooks." Letty found him a marvelous figure in his scarlet robe, and with his ma.s.s of diabolic black hair.

"Yes, and if I let you get away, where would you get away _to_?"

"Oh, I'll find a place."

"A place in jail as a vagrant, as I said the other day."

"I'd rather be in jail," she flung back at him, "than stay where I'm not wanted."

"That's not the question."

"It's the biggest question of all for me. It'd be the biggest for you too if you were in my place." She stretched out her hands to him. "Oh, please show me how to work the door, and let me go."

He flared as he was in the habit of flaring whenever he was opposed.

"You can go when we've settled the question of what you'll have to live on."

"I'll have myself to live on--just as I had before I met you in the Park."

"Nothing is the same for you or for me as before I met you in the Park."

"No, but we want to make it the same, don't we? You can't--can't marry the other girl till it is."

"I can't marry the other girl till I know you're taken care of."

"Money wouldn't take care of me. That's where you're makin' your mistake. You rich people think that money will do anything. So it will for you; but it don't mean so awful much to me." Her eyes, her lips, her hands besought him together. "Think now! What would I do with money if I had it? It ain't as if I was a lady. A lady has ways of doin' nothin' and livin' all the same; but a girl like me don't know anything about them. I'd go crazy if I didn't work--or I'd die--or I'd do somethin' worse."

It was because his nerves were on edge that he cried out: "I don't care a b.u.t.ton what you do. I'm thinking of myself."

She betrayed the sharpness of the wound only by a deepening of the damask flush. "I'm thinkin' of you, too. Wouldn't you rather have everything come right again--so that you could marry the other girl--and know that I'd done it for you _free_--and not that you'd just bought me off?"

"You mean, wouldn't I rather that all the generosity should be on your side----"

"I don't care anything about generosity. I wouldn't be doin' it for that. It'd be because----"

He flung out his arms. "Well--why?"

"Because I'd like to do something _for_ you----"

"Do something for me by making me a cad." He was beside himself.

"That's what it would come to. That's what you're playing for. I should be a cad. You dress yourself up again in this ridiculous rig----"

"It's not a ridic'lous rig. It's my own clothes----"

"Your own clothes _now_ are--are what I saw you in when I came home last evening. You can't go back to that thing. We can't go back in any way." He seemed to make a discovery. "It's no use trying to be what we were in the Park, because we can't be. Whatever we do must be in the way of--of going on to something else."

"Well, that'd be something else, if you'd just let me go, and do the desertion stunt you talked to me about----"

"I'll not let you do it unless I pay you for it."

"But it'd be payin' me for it if--if you'd just let me do it. Don't you see I _want_ to?"

"I can see that you want to keep me in your debt. I can see that I'd never have another easy moment in my life. Whatever I did, and whoever I married, I should have to owe it to _you_."

"Well, couldn't you--when I owe so much to you?"

"There you go! What do you owe to me? Nothing but getting you into an infernal sc.r.a.pe----"

"Oh, no! It's not been that at all. You'd have to be me to understand what it _has_ been. It'll be something to think of all the rest of my life--whatever I do."

"Yes, and I know how you'll think of it."

"Oh, no, you don't. You couldn't. It's nothin' to you to come into this beautiful house and see its lovely kind of life; but for me----"