Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/142

 He answered, without lifting his head: "He was boasting of it to a lot of boys. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe you would—do that sort of thing."

"Well!" she cried defiantly. "You tried to do it too!"

"Yes," he said. "I tried to do it too. Good-bye."

She followed him out to the darkness of the porch impetuously, and caught him by the sleeve. "Wait," she said. "You can't—I won't have you come here, like this. What is it? How dare you . . . accuse me! I"

He was so overwhelmed with the shame of that scene in Conroy's room that he could not argue with her, he could not look at her. He said, in a low, stifled voice: "You shouldn't have done it. I didn't think you They made fun of you. He was boasting of it." He shuddered with cold and sickness and misery. "I thought you were—above that."

She flung his arm from her. "Go away!" she choked. "Go away! I'll never see you—I'll never speak to you again." He went down the steps. She slammed the door on him. He walked home, stiffly erect, through a cold rain that pelted him with derision and the downfall of his ideals.

It was to him as bitter a disenchantment as personal grossness and infidelity and an open scandal would have been to an older man. He returned to the desecrated solitude of his room—the room that had been the sanctuary of his worship—like a priest to a wrecked and empty altar. Without lighting his lamp, he threw himself on his bed in his clothes, shaking