The Incomplete Amorist

"I shall miss you most awfully," said she with the air of one flaunting a flag.

"I wish you'd go home," he said. "Haven't you had enough of your experiment, or whatever it was, yet?"

"I thought you'd given up interfering," she said crossly. At least she meant to speak crossly.

"I thought I could say anything to you now without your--your not understanding."

"So you can." She was suddenly not cross again.

"Ah, no I can't," he said. "I want to say things to you that I can't say here. Won't you go home? Won't you let me come to see you there? Say I may. You will let me?"

If she said Yes--she refused to pursue that train of thought another inch. If she said No--then a sudden end--and forever an end--to this good companionship. "I wish I had never, never seen Him!" she told herself.

Then she found that she was speaking.

"The reason I was all alone in Paris," she was saying. The reason took a long time to expound.--The shadow withdrew itself and they had to shift the camp just when it came to the part about Betty's first meeting with Temple himself.

"And so," she said, "I've done what I meant to do--and I'm a hateful liar--and you'll never want to speak to me again."

She rooted up a fern and tore it into little ribbons.

"Why have you told me all this?" he said slowly.

"I don't know," said she.

"It is because you care, a little bit about--about my thinking well of you?"

"I can't care about that, or I shouldn't have told you, should I? Let's get back home. The pony's lost by this time, I expect."

"Is it because you don't want to have any--any secrets between us?"

"Not in the least," said Betty, chin in the air. "I shouldn't dream of telling you my secrets--or anyone else of course, I mean," she added politely.

He sighed. "Well," he said, "I wish you'd go home."

"Why don't you say you're disappointed in me, and that you despise me, and that you don't care about being friends any more, with a girl who's told lies and taken her aunt's money and done everything wrong you can think of? Let's go back. I don't want to stay here any more, with you being silently contemptuous as hard as ever you can. Why don't you say something?"