Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/197

 case. He hesitated as he drew it from his pocket and then asked, gazing down at her, "Want one of these?"

"What?" she said, as though not understanding what he could be doing. "I?" She repeated, "I?"

He dropped the cigarette case back into his pocket, wondering if she positively had forgotten the Marjorie who, a couple of weeks ago, had amused herself by shocking Bill with her white shoulders and her cigarettes; but her mind, too, was on that girl.

"It's queer how you come to like things that happen to you, isn't it, Gregg?" she asked suddenly. "Last week it seemed I would give everything I had to be back where I was before the Lovells' dance. Now I wouldn't be back there, even if I could. I wouldn't be ignorant of what was; would you?"

"Not now," said Gregg, watching her face as they came into the light of a street lamp.

"But you tried your hardest to keep it from me."

"Probably I would again."

"That's not very consistent."

"Can you be consistent, Marjorie?"

"No, of course not. I never dreamed until I got into this that there could be an affair in which you simply couldn't figure out the right and wrong. But back there at home is my father, who's committed what people call the unforgivable sin; and there in his room near mine, Gregg—his room where I used to run in the mornings from my bed when I was a little girl and jump into bed with him—there's my father, the best and finest man I ever knew. And he is a fine man, generous, kind and considerate of everybody and honorable—in every possible respect but one. Oh, I loved him so! And mother cares for him and admires him so much now because he's been a great and useful