Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/63

 "Good Lord, Kay!" he said, exasperated. "What was I to say? Every one who chose could see the thing for himself"

"Just what thing?"

"You don't really want me to say it, do you?"

"Go on. Let's hear the worst."

Her tone angered him.

"All right," he said. "That you're in love with Tom McNair. You needn't bother to deny it. I know you."

Suddenly she laughed, rather breathlessly.

"Oh, so that's it! I'm in love with him! And what about him? Is he in love with me?"

She was not laughing now, but watching him intently.

"Is he in love with me?" she repeated, when Herbert hesitated.

"I don't know. Maybe he thinks he is. You're different from the girls he's known, of course."

"Thanks!"

But there was something subdued in her now that encouraged Herbert to go on.

"There's another thing, too, Kay. These fellows out here are all right. They're a fine lot, most of them. But they don't understand eastern girls, how they can be crazy about a fellow one minute and be all through the next. It's not their game. McNair now—I'm not saying anything against him—McNair may think you're in earnest about all this. Leaving everything else aside, you ought to be fair to him."

She had a wild desire to cry out: "But I am in earnest. It's horrible, dreadful earnest. I'm in and I can't get out!" But the sight of Herbert, taking out a cigarette and delicately tapping it on the back of his hand, killed the impulse. Herbert, with his neatly pressed trousers, his neatly brushed hair, his neatly arranged and docketed mind, how could he understand?

"It's not I who am unfair to him," she said. "It's the rest of you."

"And again," said Herbert carefully, still tapping, "I happen to know that he has a girl of his own already. You