Her face was flushed now and her eyes wide open and shining with the indignation she felt. It struck Cahill again that she was the handsomest girl he had ever seen, and he liked her so—aroused and animated—even better than coldly beautiful. He was not listening very much to what she was saying, but he was watching her quietly and intently, the nobly poised head and low forehead with the hair growing so beautifully on it, and the rounded chin and firm, rather square jaw. As he looked at her the conviction was borne in upon him that she was a girl who would be capable of entire devotion or utter renunciation, and that she would be implacable if her confidence were once destroyed.
“It must be a fine thing for a man to do,” she went on, scornfully, “to make a girl love him and believe him nobler, and better, and stronger than he is, and then to undeceive her so cruelly! And a girl like this one, too! That was the worst of it. It is bad enough when the girl and the man have equal chances—when they know each other’s weapons and skill, and when they can retire gracefully and before it is too late, or when they are already so scarred up that one wound more makes no difference. But when the advantages are all on one side—when one is so much stronger than the other! It may be because I am so fond of this girl, or it may be because I am even yet unused to the world’s ways, and the four years spent in college and away from such things may have made me super-sensitive, but however it may be, it seems a despicable thing to me!” She stopped short, and the indignation and scorn in her voice rang out sharply.
Cahill moved uneasily and looked around him. He had been so absorbed in watching the girl’s face that he had hardly taken in what she had been saying, but in some vague way he felt jarred and restless.
“And then,” continued Miss Minot, “if only she did not take it as she does—if she were only angry, or indifferent, or revengeful even—but she loves him still and she would do anything for him. She would be capable to-morrow of sacrificing herself and her love if she thought it would make him happier. Such devotion is as rare as genius.”
Miss Cahill leaned far forward, tracing out the delicate inlaid pattern of the table with the point of her silver letter-opener.
“If I were engaged to a man,” she said, thoughtfully, “and were to discover that he had treated a girl so, I would give him up, no matter what it cost me.”
“And you, Miss Minot?” said Cahill, “what would you do?” He felt a sudden, sharp curiosity as to her answer, and a vague apprehension of what she would say. The girl lifted her head proudly.
“It would not be any effort for me to give such a man up,” she said, quietly.
Cahill stood up restlessly. This girl had touched upon something which he would have liked to forget. Of course it had been greatly different in his case, he assured himself, but he felt uneasy and sore. And then he smiled. There was something which struck him as pathetically amusing in the seriousness of these two girls. They were so young and untried and utterly unworldly, and they took such a tragic view of such a common-place affair, and were so ready to be sacrificed for their high ideals and principles.
“You are very severe,” he said at length, with a rather forced laugh. “If we are all to be judged like that it will go hard with us.” But he could attempt no excuse or explanation with the girl’s beautiful, indignant eyes upon him, and presently the talk drifted off in other channels.