“Is n’t it fun?” she exclaimed, pausing before him with her head on one side; “she can’t even look at a bright thing half a minute but off she goes, and here I am. Before I go this time, I’m going to stick up every shiny thing I can find where she’ll see it.”
Carroll had a sickening sensation, as if the girl he loved had gone mad before his very eyes; yet so completely did she appear like a stranger that the feeling faded as soon as it arose. This was certainly no Alice that he knew. He could not speak to her as his friend and betrothed, although it was equally impossible to address her as a stranger. He was too completely baffled and confused to be able to determine on any line of action, and she stood smiling at him as if she were entirely conscious of what was passing in his troubled brain.
“Did you know I cut up her letter?” Jenny demanded, with a smile apparently called up by the remembrance.
“Yes,” he answered, exactly as if the question had been put by a third person.
“It was an awfully foolish letter,” the girl went on. “I won’t have her writing like that to you. You’ve got to belong to me.”
He had neither the time nor the coolness to realize his emotions, but he accepted for the moment the assumption of the individuality of Jenny.
“You are nothing to me,” he said. “I am engaged to Alice.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I know that. I know all about her; lots more than you do. But I tell you, you’d a great deal better take me. I’m just as much the girl you’re engaged to as she is.”
He looked at her darkly and with trouble in his eyes.