“But you are changed.”
“I don’t think so. You can’t seem to understand me, Hal. Frankly I confess to you that I admire Dick, but I like you none the less.”
“Then why have you treated me in such a——”
“Hal, haven’t you any pride of your own? Certainly you have! Do you fancy your father and my father patching up a match between us, just as if we were creatures of wood and stone, and had no minds of our own? That’s what I resented. If that had never happened——”
“And just because of that you are going to treat me as if you detested me?”
“That is something I have never done. Far from detesting you, Hal—far from disliking you in the least, I have never liked you better than now.”
His face flushed and the eager light in his eyes grew.
“Do you mean it, Doris?” he whispered, bending nearer.
“I mean it, Hal.”
“Then he lied—he lied!” cried Darrell. “You never said it!”