She wanted first of all to fling the forty pounds back into
Ramage's face. But she had spent nearly half of it, and had no
conception of how such a sum could be made good again. She
thought of all sorts of odd and desperate expedients, and with
passionate petulance rejected them all.
She took refuge in beating her pillow and inventing insulting
epithets for herself. She got up, drew up her blind, and stared
out of window at a dawn-cold vision of chimneys for a time, and
then went and sat on the edge of her bed. What was the
alternative to going home? No alternative appeared in that
darkness.
It seemed intolerable that she should go home and admit herself
beaten. She did most urgently desire to save her face in
Morningside Park, and for long hours she could think of no way of
putting it that would not be in the nature of unconditional
admission of defeat.
"I'd rather go as a chorus-girl," she said.
She was not very clear about the position and duties of a
chorus-girl, but it certainly had the air of being a last
desperate resort. There sprang from that a vague hope that
perhaps she might extort a capitulation from her father by a
threat to seek that position, and then with overwhelming
clearness it came to her that whatever happened she would never
be able to tell her father about her debt. The completest
capitulation would not wipe out that trouble. And she felt that
if she went home it was imperative to pay. She would always be
going to and fro up the Avenue, getting glimpses of Ramage,
seeing him in trains. . . .
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