"I didn't go to see Carton. He is nothing to me, has not been for months. I was only amusing myself when I knew him—leading him on, playing with him, then." She paused, then turned the attack on him. "What did you think of Miss Ashton? You thought I didn't see you, but you hardly took your eyes off her while I was in the hallway waiting to hear the verdict."
It was Langhorne's turn to defend himself. "It wasn't so much Margaret
Ashton as that fellow Carton I was watching," he answered hastily.
"Then you—you haven't forgotten poor little me?" she inquired with a sincere plaintiveness in her voice.
"Mary," he said, lowering his voice, "I have tried to forget you—tried, because I had no right to remember you in the old way—not while you and Martin remained together. Margaret and I had always been friends—but I think Carton and this sort of thing,"—he waved his hand I imagined at the suffrage dancers—"have brought us to the parting of the ways. Perhaps it is better. I'm not so sure that it isn't best."
"And yet," she said slowly, "you are piqued—piqued that another should have won where you failed—even if the prize isn't just what you might wish."
Langhorne assented by silence. "Hartley," she went on at length, "you said a moment ago you had tried to forget me—"
"But can't," he cut in with almost passionate fierceness. "That was what hurt me when I—er—heard that you had gone with Murtha to that dinner of Dorgan's. I couldn't help trying to warn you of it. I know Martin neglects you. But I was mad—mad clean through when I saw you playing with Carton a few months ago. I don't know anything about it—don't want to. Maybe he was innocent and you were tempting him. I don't care. It angered me—angered me worse than ever when I saw later that he was winning with Margaret Ashton. Everywhere, he seemed to be crossing my trail, to be my nemesis. I—I wish I was Dorgan—I wish I could fight."
Langhorne checked himself before he said too much. As it was I saw that it had been he who had told Mrs. Ogleby that the Black Book existed. He had not told her that he had made it, if in fact he had, and she had let the thing out, never thinking Langhorne had been the eavesdropper, but supposing it must be Carton.
"Why—why did you go to that dinner with Murtha?" he asked finally, with a trace of reproach in his tone.
"Why? Why not?" she answered defiantly. "What do I care about Martin? Why should I not have my—my freedom, too? I went because it was wild, unconventional, perhaps wrong. I felt that way. If—if I had felt that you cared—perhaps—I could have been—more discreet."