ust tell you--"

"Not until you give me some legitimate title to your confidence.
You've got no right to confide in me unless you mean to marry me--and
you haven't said you would yet."

"I can't--I couldn't without telling you--please let me speak!"
She drew a long breath of desperation and grasped the nettle firmly.
"I stole the clothes I came here in. My name isn't Manwaring--it's
Sally Manvers. I was a shop-girl--"

"Half a minute. Mrs. Gosnold knows all this, doesn't she?"

"Yes--"

"You told her everything, and still she stood for you?"

"Yes, but--"

"That's enough for me. I don't want to hear anything more until you're
my wife. After that you'll have to tell me--and if there's any trouble
remaining to be straightened out then, why, it'll be my natural job as
a husband to fix it up for you. Till then I won't listen to any more
of your confidences that have nothing whatever to do with the fact
that I love you and believe in you and want to make you happy."

"But don't you understand that a girl who would steal and lie in order
to get into society--"

"Oh, everybody's got to be foolish about something or other. You'll
get over this social craze. The more you see of it the more sure your
cure. Now don't mistake me; I'm not for an instant implying that some
of the finest people that ever walked God's green earth don't figure
in what we call Society; and there are more of them on this little
island, perhaps, than anywhere else in America; and I'd be the
last to cry them down or pretend I'm not glad and proud of their
acquaintance and friendship. The trouble is, they can't in the nature
of things keep up their social order without attracting a cloud of
parasites, snobs, and toadies--and that's what makes me sick of the
whole social game as practised to-day."

"And you can't understand that I am precisely what you've described--a
parasite!"

"You couldn't be if you wanted to. Maybe you think you could, but
you're wrong; you haven't got it in you."

Against such infatuation candour was powerless. She retreated to the
last ditch. "But you told me your father's heart was set on your
marrying a society woman!"

"Well, what of that? You don't suppose I think any of them have got
anything on you, do you? Besides, dad isn't altogether an old idiot,
and if the kind of society woman he wants me to marry wouldn't look at
me, and if my happiness is at stake . . . Well, even if he did want to
ruin my life by hitchi