“You love me? Therefore we’ve got to end everything here? Tell me, Mimi, what is back of all this?”
Mimi dashed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, her handkerchief gone and she too upset to look for it. Determination replaced the expression of pain.
“Here is what is back of it! I told you that you didn’t know anything about me or my life—” she began.
“But I do. Mrs. Crosby has given me your whole history, she went to Francine for what she herself didn’t know already.”
“But neither Mrs. Crosby nor Francine knows anything about me before I went to Francine’s eight years ago to work. And there’s a lot in my life back of that, I’m going to tell you the whole story and then you’ll see why—”
Jimmie shook off his lethargy, his air of supplication.
“Mimi, you’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said firmly. “I know you—and that’s enough for me. Whatever it is you’re worried about, I know you well enough to know that the things you’re trying to magnify into an insurmountable barrier between us were done through no fault of yours. You’re too fine, too decent—”
“No—no, Jimmie,” she cried, “you must let me finish—”
“There’ll be no finishing. You and I both will be much happier if we just let that drop—dropped for all time. If you told me and we married, you’d feel all the rest of your life that I was holding against you what you