"Dear boy," said Bettie, when I had made an end of reading, "and are you very miserable?"
Her fingers were interlocked behind her small black head; and the sympathy with which she regarded me was tenderly flavored with amusement.
This much I noticed as I glanced upward from my manuscript, and mustered a Spartan smile. "If misery loves company, then am I the least unhappy soul alive. For I don't want anybody but just you, and I believe I never will."
"Oh--? But I don't count." The girl continued, with composure: "Or rather, I have always counted your affairs, so that I know precisely what it all amounts to."
"Sum total?"
"A lot of imitation emotions." She added hastily: "Oh, quite a good imitation, dear; you are smooth enough to see to that. Why, I remember once--when you read me that first sonnet, sitting all hunched up on the little stool, and pretending you didn't know I knew who you meant me to know it was for, and ending with a really very effective, breathless sob--and caught my hand and pressed it to your forehead for a moment--Why, that time I was thoroughly rattled and almost believed--even I--that--" She shrugged. "And if I had been younger--!" she said, half regretfully, for at this time Bettie was very nearly twenty-two.
"Yes." The effective breathless sob responded to what had virtually been an encore. "I have not forgotten."
"Only for a moment, though." Miss Hamlyn reflected, and then added, brightly: "Now, most girls would have liked it, for it sounded all wool. And they would have gone into it, as you wanted, and have been very, very happy for a while. Then, after a time--after you had got a sonnet or two out of it, and had made a sufficiency of pretty speeches,--you would have gone for an admiring walk about yourself, and would have inspected your sensations and have applauded them, quite enthusiastically, and would have said, in effect: 'Madam, I thank you for your attention. Pray regard the incident as closed.'"
"You are doing me," I observed, "an injustice. And however tiny they may be, I hate 'em."
"But, Robin, can't you see," she said, with an odd earnestness, "that to be fond of you is quite disgracefully easy, even though--" Bettie Hamlyn said, presently: "Why, your one object in life appears to be to find a girl who will allow you to moon around her and make verses about her. Oh, very well! I met to-day just the sort of pretty idiot who will let you do it. She is visiting Kathleen Eppes for the Finals. She has a great deal of money, too, I hear." And Bettie mentioned a name.
"That's rather queer," said I. "I used to know that girl. She will be at the K. A. dance to-morrow night, I suppose,"--and I put up my manuscript with a large air of tolerance. "I dare say that I have been exaggerating matters a bit, after all. Any woman who treated me in the way that Miss Aurelia did is not, really, worthy of regret. And in any event, I got a ballade out of her and six--no, seven--other poems."
For the name which Bettie had mentioned was that of Stella Musgrave, and I was, somehow, curiously desirous to come again to Stella, and nervous about it, too, even then....
