"If I were worth my salt I'd
hang myself before morning!" The heartsick excitement of a man on the
crest of some moral crisis looked out luridly from his eyes.
Sylvia rose desperately to meet that crisis. "Look here, Arnold. I'm
going to tell you something I've never spoken of to anybody ... not
even Mother ... and I'm going to do it, so you'll _believe_ me when I
say you're worth living. When I was eighteen years old I was a horrid,
selfish, self-willed child. I suppose everybody's so at eighteen. I
was just crazy for money and fine dresses and things like that, that
we'd never had at home; and a man with a lot of money fell in love
with me. It was my fault. I made him, though I didn't know then what I
was doing, or at least I wouldn't let myself think what I was doing.
And I got engaged to him. I got engaged at half-past four in the
afternoon, and at seven o'clock that evening I was running away from
him, and I've never seen him since." Her voice went on steadily, but
a quick hot wave of scarlet flamed up over her face. "He was not a
decent man," she said briefly, and went on: "It frightened me almost
to death before I got my bearings: I was just a little girl and I
hadn't understood anything--and I don't _understand_ much now. But I
did learn one thing from all that--I learned to know when a man isn't
decent. I can't tell you how I know--it's all over him--it's all over
me--it's his eyes, the way he stands, the expression of his mouth--I
don't only see it--I feel it--I feel it the way a thermometer feels
it when you put a match under the bulb .
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