Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/204

 "She counts on freeing him and means to marry him, if she succeeds. She is clever—you've no idea how clever she is. For instance, she had books on musical composition sent to him in jail last week. She says, so he can study in jail and make himself a musician. Of course, he can't and won't. It's merely a spectacular play for cheap, popular sympathy and to furnish his music publishers with material for sensational press notices on his new jazz compositions, after he is freed. But she did it. That's how clever she is!"

He stopped and sat pressed straight against the hard back of his bench and felt his heart thumping under the excitement of his own condemnation of the Royle girl. It caught him, suddenly, aghast at that which he had said. Why had he so distorted the incident of the Barsoni book, and her three dollars and a half, wrapped in the list which was in his pocket now?

Was it because suddenly he had understood it after the manner in which now he had reported it to his mother? No; for all his body, trembling under his thumping heart, denied his interpretation. He had assailed her thus, distorting and misinterpreting that incident to force it to fit in with the rest for the purpose of making impossible to himself, and before his mother, his own emotions in regard to her.

"But he will not be freed!" Calvin heard his mother say.

"What?" he asked.

"The musician will not be freed, surely," his mother repeated.

"No," said Calvin. "No; I think not."

His finger was in his pocket, and he touched the little slip of paper upon which the Royle girl had written; and if he were at all consistent, he would fling it into the flame. But he did not.