He laughed. "Can't I have a car as well as anybody?"
"But I thought--that is--you always said----"
"That I was as poor as Job's turkey, eh? Only a stall. I just worked for Fisher for the sociological experience. I don't have to work really."
He couldn't resist the temptation to tease her a little. "My old man's a multi-millionaire," he rattled on. "Of course I get sick of that life sometimes, and scout about a bit."
Her eyes became so reproachful his heart smote him.
"Oh, that's only a joke," he said quickly. "Lord knows the poverty was real enough--but it's over for good!" "For both of us," he would have liked to add, but did not quite dare. "Look!" he cried, drawing his hand out of his pocket with the great roll of yellow-backed bills. "My income for half an hour!"
He laughed again. "Honest, I didn't steal it."
He told her at last. The story sounded strange in his own ears. When he came to the end he saw to his astonishment that there were tears in her eyes.
"I don't know," she said smiling through the rain. "Am I not silly? But I suppose it means change. And I hate changes!"
"A change for the better, only. If you knew how I hated poverty!"
Her eyes dropped. "I, too," that meant, but she did not care to tell him so, audibly.
"If you knew how mean I felt every day when we went to that beanery together, and you had to pay for your own lunch!"
"But what was the difference? We both work for our living."
"A man feels differently. Why I never would ask you if I could come to see you in the evenings, because I couldn't take you out anywhere. I was afraid I couldn't keep my end up with your gang."
"Well all that's ended now! Now there's no limit but the sky! And here we are. The lawyer guy told me this was the swellest place down-town."
A fresh panic seized her. "I can't eat in a place like this! I'm not fit to be seen!"
Circumstances were too strong for her. She found herself being wafted across the sidewalk, and was delivered into the hands of the maid in the lobby, before she could think of an effective resistance. Indeed they were seated at a snowy little board brightened by an electric candle, before she really got her breath. At Jack's elbow stood a post-graduate waiter with a deferential bend in his back, and at just the right distance an orchestra was discussing the _Meditation_ from _Thaïs_.