SHE, quenching him with a look: "Mr.Ransom, I shall NEVER change toward you! You confess that you had your opportunity, and that you despised it."HE: "Oh! NOT despised it!"
SHE: "Neglected it."
HE: "Not wilfully--no.I confess that I was stupidly, vilely, pusillan--pusillan--illani" -SHE: "'Monsly" -
HE: "Thanks--'mously unworthy of it; but I didn't despise it; Ididn't neglect it; and if you will only let me show by a lifetime of devotion how dearly and truly I have loved you from the first moment I drove that cow away" -SHE: "Mr.Ransom, I have told you that I should never change toward you.That cow was nothing when weighed in the balance against your being willing to leave a poor girl, whom you supposed interested in you, and to whom you had paid the most marked attention, without a word to show her that you cared for her.What is a cow, or a whole herd of cows, as compared with obliging a young lady to offer you money that you hadn't earned, and then savagely flinging it back in her face? A yoke of oxen would be nothing--or a mad bull."HE: "Oh, I acknowledge it! I confess it."SHE: "And you own that I am right in refusing to listen to you now?"HE, desolately: "Yes, yes."
SHE: "It seems that you gave me lessons in order to be with me, and if possible to interest me in you; and then you were going away without a word."HE, with a groan: "It was only because I was afraid to speak."SHE: "Oh, is THAT any excuse?"
HE: "No; none."
SHE: "A man ought always to have courage." After a pause, in which he stands before her with bowed head: "Then there's nothing for me but to give you this money."HE, with sudden energy: "This is too much! I" -SHE, offering him the bank-notes: "No; it is the exact sum.Icounted it very carefully."
HE: "I won't take it; I can't! I'll never take it!"SHE, standing with the money in her outstretched hand: "I have your word as a gentleman that you will take it."HE, gasping: "Oh, well--I will take it--I will"--He clutches the money, and rushes toward the door."Good-evening; ah--good-by" -SHE, calling after him: "The receipt, Mr.Ransom! Please sign this receipt!" She waves the paper in the air.
HE: "Oh, yes, certainly! Where is it--what--which"--He rushes back to her, and seizing the receipt, feels blindly about for the pen and ink."Where shall I sign?"SHE: "Read it first."
HE: "Oh, it's all--all right" -
SHE: "I insist upon your reading it.It's a business transaction.
Read it aloud."
HE, desperately: "Well, well!" He reads."'Received from Miss Ethel Reed, in full, for twenty-five lessons in oil-painting, one hundred and twenty-five dollars, and her hand, heart, and dearest love forever.'" He looks up at her."Ethel!"SHE, smiling: "Sign it, sign it!"
HE, catching her in his arms and kissing her: "Oh, yes--HERE!"SHE, pulling a little away from him, and laughing: "Oh, oh! I only wanted ONE signature! Twenty autographs are too many, unless you'll let me trade them off, as the collectors do."HE: "No; keep them all! I couldn't think of letting any one else have them.One more!"SHE: "No; it's quite enough!"
SHE frees herself, and retires beyond the table."This unexpected affection" -HE: "IS it unexpected--seriously?"
SHE: "What do you mean?"
HE: "Oh, nothing!"
SHE: "Yes, tell me!"
HE: "I hoped--I thought--perhaps--that you might have been prepared for some such demonstration on my part."SHE: "And why did you think--hope--perhaps--THAT, Mr.Ransom, may Iask?"
HE: "If I hadn't, how should I have dared to speak?"SHE: "Dared? You were obliged to speak! Well, since it's all over, I don't mind saying that I DID have some slight apprehensions that something in the way of a declaration might be extorted from you."HE: "Extorted? Oh!" He makes an impassioned rush toward her.
SHE, keeping the table between them: "No, no."HE: "Oh, I merely wished to ask why you chose to make me suffer so, after I had come to the point."SHE: "Ask it across the table, then." After a moment's reflection, "I made you suffer--I made you suffer--so that you might have a realizing sense of what you had made ME suffer."HE, enraptured by this confession: "Oh, you angel!"SHE, with tender magnanimity: "No; only a woman--a poor, trusting, foolish woman!" She permits him to surround the table, with imaginable results.Then, with her head on his shoulder: "You'll NEVER let me regret it, will you, darling? You'll never oblige me to punish you again, dearest, will you? Oh, it hurt ME far worse to SEEyour pain than it did you to--to--feel it!" On the other side of the partition, Mr.Grinnidge's pipe falls from his lips, parted in slumber, and shivers to atoms on the register."Oh!" She flies at the register with a shriek of dismay, and is about to close it.
