e looked into his eyes with a kind of
imperious reasonableness. "Whatever I was to you, Fectnor," she said, "I
became because I was forced into it."

"I never forced you," he responded stoutly.

"In one way, you didn't; but just the same ... you had both hands reached
out to seize me when I fell. You never tried to help me; you were always
digging the pitfall under my feet. You were forever holding out your hand
with money in it; and there was you on one side of me with your money, and
my father on the other with his never-ending talk about poverty and debts
and his fear of you--and you know you took pains to make him fear you--and
his saying always that it wouldn't make any difference in what people
thought of me, whether I stood out against you or...." Her glance shifted
and fell. There were some things she could not put into words.

"That's book talk, Sylvia. Come out into the open. I know what the female
nature is. You're all alike. You all know when to lower your eyes and lift
your fan and back into a corner. That's the female's job, just as it's the
male's job to be bold and rough. But you all know to a hair how far to
carry that sort of thing. You always stop in plenty of time to get
caught."

She looked at him curiously. "I suppose," she said after a pause, "that
roughly describes certain love-making processes. But it really wasn't
love-making between you and me, Fectnor. It was a kind of barter."

His eyes seemed to snare hers relentlessly. "You're not doing yourself
justice, Sylvia," he said. "You're not one of the bartering kind. You'd
have killed me--you'd have killed yourself--before you'd have let me touch
you, if you hadn't liked me. You know that's a fact."

The shadow of a frown darkened her brow. "There was a time when you had a
kind of fascination for me. The way you had of making other men seem
little and dumb, when you came in and spoke. You seemed so much alive. I
noticed once that you didn't count your change when you'd paid for some
drinks. That was the way in everything you did. You seemed lavish with
everything that was in you; you let the big things go and didn't worry
about the change. You were a big man in some ways, Fectnor. A girl needn't
have been ashamed of admiring you. But Fectnor ... I've come to see what a
low life it was I was leading. In cases like that, what the woman yields
is ... is of every possible importance to her, while the man parts only
with his money."

He smote t