“No.”
“Oh, hell!” she said, “let’s not talk about it. Let’s never talk about it.”
“All right.”
“It was rather a knock his being ashamed of me. He was ashamed of me for a while, you know.”
“No.”
“Oh, yes. They ragged him about me at the café, I guess. He wanted me to grow my hair out. Me, with long hair. I’d look so like hell.”
“It’s funny.”
“He said it would make me more womanly. I’d look a fright.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, he got over that. He wasn’t ashamed of me long.”
“What was it about being in trouble?”
“I didn’t know whether I could make him go, and I didn’t have a sou to go away and leave him. He tried to give me a lot of money, you know. I told him I had scads of it. He knew that was a lie. I couldn’t take his money, you know.”
“No.”
“Oh, let’s not talk about it. There were some funny things, though. Do give me a cigarette.”
I lit the cigarette.
“He learned his English as a waiter in Gib.”
“Yes.”
“He wanted to marry me, finally.”
“Really?”
“Of course. I can’t even marry Mike.”
“Maybe he thought that would make him Lord Ashley.”
“No. It wasn’t that. He really wanted to marry me. So I couldn’t go away from him, he said. He wanted to make it sure I could never go away from him. After I’d gotten more womanly, of course.”
