Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/417

 "You did hurt me, Billie," Henry admitted soberly, feeling that the sooner some things came out the sooner they could be put behind forever. "But there must have been some reason," he conceded quickly; then urged gently: "Why was it, dear, that you didn't send—didn't come to me?"

"Because I was a jealous cat!" she accused herself bitterly.

"Jealous? . . . You? Billie!" Henry was both incredulous and tenderly reproachful.

"Although at first it was just because I loved you," she recalled, her distressed features beautiful in their perfect candor.

"Because you loved me?" Harrington asked, perplexed.

"Yes," she averred with a nod of simple conviction. "I thought I was helping to save you."

This was what had sounded so preposterous when Lahleet had told it to him; but it fell differently from Billie's white lips, the dear! She had actually believed it.

"Besides, Henry," Billie explained—entirely in the tone of self-indictment, not at all in self-justification—"you'd hurt my pride by refusing to let me persuade you out of your course, as I'd boasted to father I could. But the chamber of commerce meeting was the worst. I actually thought it was you who were traitor to your town, Henry." Her voice quavered and her blue eyes filled with horror of herself. "Oh, I was bitter at you—until they went further and put you in jail on that absurd murder charge." As she said this, her voice got a shudder in it and the deeps of the eyes glowed with a reminiscent indignation