“Are you sure?” asked Dick, with great eagerness. “It would be like you to treat a fellow generous in that way. How do you know Inza felt as you say?”
“She had told me so!”
“When?”
“Almost two years ago.”
Starbright seemed more surprised than ever.
“I can hardly believe it! Why, all the fellows thought her struck on you! You seemed to be the only one she cared for.”
“We were the best of friends, my boy; but it is the truth that Inza herself told me we could never be anything but friends. I do not say this to soothe your feelings, but because I do not wish you to regard yourself or Inza in a wrong light. She had a right to like you, Dick, and I don’t wonder that she did. You are——”
The freshman stopped Merry with a savage gesture.
“Don’t talk that way!” he cried. “Wait till you know everything! When and where was it that she told you this?”
“It was one year ago last summer, on the veranda of the little hotel in the town of Maplewood, where I was managing a baseball-team. The season had closed, and the time of separation had come. Inza had been spending a few weeks in Maplewood. On the evening before the final game we were together on the veranda, and, during the course of our talk, she frankly and plainly told me that she had outgrown her first foolish infatuation for me, and that in the future we were to be nothing more than the best of friends.”