"But isn't 'horrors' rather strong ?" "What you _do_ is rather strong!" the girl promptly returned.
"What _I_ do ?" "Your extravagance, your selfishness, your immorality, your crimes," she pursued, without heeding his expression.
"I _say_!"-- her companion showed the queerest stare.
"I like them, as I tell you--I revel in them.

But we needn't go into that," she quietly went on; "for all I get out of it is the harmless pleasure of knowing.

I know, I know, I know!"-- she breathed it ever so gently.
"Yes; that's what has been between us," he answered much more simply.
She could enjoy his simplicity in silence, and for a moment she did so.
"If I do stay because you want it--and I'm rather capable of that--there are two or three things I think you ought to remember.

One is, you know, that I'm there sometimes for days and weeks together without your ever coming." "Oh I'll come every day!" he honestly cried.
She was on the point, at this, of imitating with her hand his movement of shortly before; but she checked herself, and there was no want of effect in her soothing substitute.

"How can you?
How can you ?" He had, too manifestly, only to look at it there, in the vulgarly animated gloom, to see that he couldn't; and at this point, by the mere action of his silence, everything they had so definitely not named, the whole presence round which they had been circling, became part of their reference, settled in solidly between them.