"Poor girl!" said the wife in pitying anticipation of a tragedy.
"Don't call her 'poor girl!'" Wallace said, his face darkening. "She'll
look out for herself. There's a lot of talk," he added with a sort of
dull resentment, "about 'leading young girls astray,' and 'betraying
innocence,' and all that, but I want to tell you right now that nine
times out of ten it's the girls that do the leading astray! You ask any
fellow----"
The expression on Martie's face did not alter by the flicker of an
eyelash. She had been looking steadily at him, and she still stared
steadily. But she felt her throat thicken, and the blood begin to pump
convulsively at her heart.
"But Wallace," she stammered eagerly, "she wasn't--she wasn't----"
"Sure she was!" he said coarsely; "she was as rotten as the rest of
them!"
"But--but----" Martie's lips felt dry, her voice failed her.
"I was only a kid, I tell you," said Wallace, uneasily watching her.
"Why, Mart," he added, dropping on his knees beside the bed, and
putting his arms about her, "all boys are like that! Every one knows
it. There isn't a man you know----And you're the only girl I ever
loved, Sweetheart, you know that. Men are different, that's all. A boy
growing up can't any more keep out of it----And I never lied to you,
Mart. I told you when we were engaged that I wished to God, for your
sake, that I'd never----"
"Yes, I know!" Martie whispered, shutting her eyes. He kissed her
suddenly colourless cheek, and she heard him move away.
"Well, to go on with the rest of this," Wallace resumed suddenly.
Martie opened tired eyes to watch him, but he did not meet her look.
"Golda and I went together for about a year," he said, "and finally she
got to talking as if we were going to be married. One day--it was a
rainy day in the office, and I had a cold, and she fixed me up
something hot to drink--she got to crying, and she said her stepfather
had ordered her out of the house. I didn't believe it then, and I don't
believe it now, but anyway, we talked it all over, and she said she was
going down to Los Angeles and hunt up this other fellow. Well, that
made me feel kind of sick, because we had been going together for so
long, and her talking about how things would be when we were married
and all that, and I said--you know the way you do--'What's the matter
with us getting married, right now?'"
Martie's face was fixed in a look of agonized attention: she made no
sound.
"She
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