Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/283

 ended beside a clump of syringa bushes and a rustic bench. "The very place," she agreed. "Isn't it lovely to be out among real trees, instead of painted stage imitations! And the ducks, too!" She sat down, making herself comfortable, as if for a long tête-a-tête. "Now light up and talk to me. . . Tell me—tell me why you left college?"

She turned toward him, sideways in the seat, her back against the arm of it, studying him unobserved, with an expression of face that might have put him on his guard if he had seen it.

He drew the first contented puffs of his cigarette and replied: "I don't believe I can. It was all mixed up. I felt I was wasting my time there. I wanted to be at work. Conroy and Pittsey were leaving together, coming to New York. I had quarrelled with my father about not studying law. Then besides" He stopped, confused. "There were other things. I thought someone Oh, I couldn't tell you. It was all mixed up. I misunderstood, I guess. I made a mistake."

At his "I thought someone"—her eyes widened on him, unwinking, with the almost painful eagerness of a sportsman who has seen the stirring of his game. She waited so.

He smoked in a silent embarrassment that was, in itself, a confession of the truth. He was thinking of that parting on the steps of the Kimball porch, of his blank despair, and of Margaret sobbing in the darkness.

She said, at last: "Your father didn't wish to send you to college, did he?"

"No. . . . I had failed on my entrance exams."