Lola finished the letter and, folding it carefully, handed it back to him.
"I--I thought," he answered, very much embarrassed, "that you would want to know how you stood."
"Yes, I am very much obliged, but I am afraid I don't. Are you acting now as Mr. Fenway's agent, or as my friend?"
"Do you believe the insinuations this man has dared to make? That I am not a proper wife for his son?"
"Well, I--I--only want you to know that if you marry the boy, his father will not give him another dollar."
"What were you doing out of the hotel until three o'clock this morning?"
"I could not sleep, because I was thinking of you! I was at my window, and I saw you when you returned, and I saw the young fellow who left you at the steps."
"Oh!" She looked at him for a moment; then a slow smile formed itself on her lips. "Then you, I suppose, do not care to count yourself any longer as my friend?"
"Why not?" He looked at her with a new boldness. "I am a man of the world. Dick can't do anything more for you, but is there any reason why you and I should not be good friends?"
"I think you are making a mistake," she answered quietly. "Dick fully intends to marry me. I am not the sort of girl you seem to think."
"Very well," he rose reluctantly, "I suppose there isn't anything more to say. So you will marry Dick?"
"I can't figure this out." He looked at her, doing his best to read her real intentions in her face. "You can't love him, or why this other fellow? I suppose you count on his father's forgiveness, but that, if it comes at all, won't come for years. You can't wait years; don't you see that? Your youth is your capital; you would be a fool to squander it, and you don't look to me like a fool."
"No, I am not a fool," she said quietly. "I have certain plans, certain intentions, that mean everything to me. Dick, nor his father, nor you can't come between me and the life I want. You might help me, any one of you, but you can't hold me back. I should like to tell you just what it is I do want, but not here, not now. Are you afraid to trust yourself alone with me?"
"Meet me in half an hour on the shore road, just above the place where we met yesterday; do you remember?"
"Get out of your head, before you meet me, the thought that I am the sort of woman who can be bought by any man. Until last night no man, in all my life, ever had the right to say that he had been anything to me. Do you believe that?"