Yet he had scarcely taken three steps toward the road before she was
beside him, her hand upon his sleeve.
"I won't stay!" she exclaimed, fiercely, "I won't, Bob Hampton. I 'd
rather go with you than be good."
His sensitive face flushed with delight, but he looked gravely down
into her indignant eyes. "Oh, yes, you will, Kid," and his hand
touched her roughened hair caressingly. "She's a good, kind woman, all
right, and I don't blame her for not liking my style."
"Do--do you really want me to stick it out here, Bob?"
It was no small struggle for him to say so, for he was beginning to
comprehend just what this separation meant. She was more to him than
he had ever supposed, more to him than she had been even an hour
before; and now he understood clearly that from this moment they must
ever run farther apart--her life tending upward, his down. Yet there
was but one decision possible. A life which is lonely and
dissatisfied, a wasted life, never fully realizes how lonely,
dissatisfied, and wasted it is until some new life, beautiful in young
hope and possibility, comes into contact with it. For a single instant
Hampton toyed with the temptation confronting him, this opportunity of
brightening his own miserable future by means of her degradation.
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