Chapter 3

_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 I ask?”

_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 _see_ your 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. “That wretch has been listening, and has heard every word!”

_He_, preventing her: “What wretch? Where?”

_She_: “Don’t you hear him, mumbling and grumbling there?”

_Grinnidge_: “Well, I swear! Cash value of twenty-five dollars, and untold toil in coloring it!”

_Ransom_, listening with an air of mystification: “Who’s that?”

_She_: “Gummidge, Grimmidge—whatever you called him. Oh!” _She_ arrests herself in consternation. “Now I _have_ done it!”

_He_: “Done what?”

_She_: “Oh—nothing!”

_He_: “I don’t understand. Do you mean to say that my friend Grinnidge’s room is on the other aide of the wall, and that you can hear him talk through the register?” _She_ preserves the silence of abject terror. He stoops over the register, and calls down it. “Grinnidge! Hallo!”

_Grinnidge_: “Hallo, yourself!”

_Ransom_, to _Miss Reed_: “Sounds like the ghostly squeak of the phonograph.” To _Grinnidge_: “What’s the trouble?”

_Grinnidge_: “Smashed my pipe. Dozed off and let it drop on this infernal register.”

_Ransom_, turning from the register with impressive deliberation: “Miss Reed, may I ask _how_ you came to know that his name was Gummidge, or Grimmidge, or whatever I called him?”

_She_: “Oh, dearest, I _can’t_ tell you! Or—yes, I had better.” Impulsively: “I will judge you by myself. _I_ could forgive _you_ anything!”

_He_, doubtfully: “Oh, could you?”

_She_: “Everything! I had—I had better make a clean breast of it. Yes, I had. Though I don’t like to. I—I listened!”

_He_: “Listened?”

_She_: “Through the register to—to—what—you—were saying before you—came in here.” Her head droops.

_He_: “Then you heard everything?”

_She_: “Kill me, but don’t look _so_ at me! It was accidental at first—indeed it was; and then I recognized your voice; and then I knew you were talking about me; and I had so much at stake; and I did love you so dearly! You _will_ forgive me, darling? It wasn’t as if I were listening with any bad motive.”

_He_, taking her in his arms: “Forgive you? Of course I do. But you must change this room at once, Ethel; you see you hear everything on the other side, too.”

_She_: “Oh, not if you whisper on this. You couldn’t hear _us_?” At a dubious expression of his: “You _didn’t_ hear us? If you did, I can never forgive you!”

_He_: “It was accidental at first—indeed it was; and then I recognized your voice; and then I knew you were talking about me; and I had so much at stake; and I did love you so dearly!”

_She_: “All that has nothing whatever to do with it. How much did you hear?”

_He_, with exemplary meekness: “Only what you were saying before Grinnidge came in. You didn’t whisper then. I had to wait there for him while”—

_She_: “While you were giving your good resolutions a rest?”

_He_: “While I was giving my good resolutions a rest.”

_She_: “And that accounts for your determination to humble yourself so?”

_He_: “It seemed perfectly providential that I should have known just what conditions you were going to exact of me.”

_She_: “Oh, don’t make light of it! I can tell you it’s a very serious matter.”

_He_: “It was very serious for me when you didn’t meet my self-abasement as you had led me to expect you would.”

_She_: “Don’t make fun! I’m trying to think whether I can forgive you.”

_He_, with insinuation: “Don’t you believe you could think better if you put your head on my shoulder?”

_She_: “Nonsense! Then I should forgive you without thinking.” After a season of reflection: “No, I _can’t_ forgive you. I never could forgive eavesdropping. It’s _too_ low.”

_He_, in astonishment: “Why, you did it yourself!”

_She_: “But you began it. Besides, it’s very different for a man. Women are weak, poor, helpless creatures. They have to use finesse. But a man should be above it.”

_He_: “You said you could forgive me anything.”

_She_: “Ah, but I didn’t know what you’d been doing!”

_He_, with pensive resignation, and a feint of going: “Then I suppose it’s all over between us.”

_She_, relenting: “If you could think of any reason _why_ I should forgive you”—

_He_: “I can’t.”

_She_, after consideration: “Do you suppose Mr. Grumage, or Grimidge, heard too?”

_He_: “No; Grinnidge is a very high-principled fellow, and wouldn’t listen; besides, he wasn’t there, you know.”

_She_: “Well, then, I will forgive you on these grounds.” _He_ instantly catches her to his heart. “But these alone, remember.”

_He_, rapturously: “Oh, on any!”

_She_, tenderly: “And you’ll always be devoted? And nice? And not try to provoke me? Or neglect me? Or anything?”

_He_: “Always! Never!”

_She_: “Oh, you dear, sweet, simple old thing—how I _do_ love you!”

_Grinnidge_, who has been listening attentively to every word at the register at his side: “Ransom, if you don’t want me to go stark mad, _shut the register_!”

_Ransom_, about to comply: “Oh, poor old man! I forgot it was open!”

_Miss Reed_, preventing him: “No! If he has been vile enough to listen at a register, let him suffer. Come, sit down here, and I’ll tell you just when I began to care for you. It was long before the cow. Do you remember that first morning after you arrived”—_She_ drags him close to the register, so that every word may tell upon the envious Grinnidge, on whose manifestations of acute despair, a rapid curtain descends.