"You don't need to tell me that," said Tony, very miserable, and making me miserable as well. "I know you're true blue—the truest and bluest—but there are some things I've got no right to do, even for you, Peggy. I'd cut my tongue out to please you, I do believe I would, but to use it in a dishonourable way for your sake is dif——"
"There! I told you you didn't love me!" I reproached him. "You accuse me now of wanting you to do something dishonourable. I don't want you to! I can't see that it would be dishonourable to put me out of suspense about a dear friend like Captain March, a man who's in love with my sister, and wants to marry her, as you surely know. But that settles everything between us, of course. To be perfectly honest with you, Tony, I must say that I'm not certain, even if you did what I have asked, that I'd be able to do what you ask—love you, except as a friend. I've said before that I couldn't. But I might have changed my mind in future, for all I know, if——"
"If!" echoed Tony. "That's a darned cruel way to put it!" And he looked so much like the nicest Billiken ever seen on earth that I really did love him, though not quite in the way he wanted.
"No doubt I am cruel as well as dishonourable," I replied frigidly. "So now you can easily stop loving me, can't you?"
"No, I can't," he said. "See here, Peggy, what can I say or do to make things right? I think you're the kindest and dearest and most honourable girl whoever lived, and I——"
"Prove it then!" I cried. And I laid my hands on his.
"How? What can I do?"
"Tell me the whole truth about what happened last night. Oh—I'm not trying to bribe you! I don't promise if you do tell, that I'll love you, or marry you, or anything important of that sort. All I promise is to be so grateful, so glad, that—who knows how I may feel to you afterward? And anyhow, I'll let you kiss me, this very night—on my cheek."
"You will? Yet—you say you're not bribing me! You couldn't offer me a much bigger bribe. Why, Peggy, I'd be happy just to die—after getting a kiss from you—even on your cheek!" and he laughed at himself forlornly.
"You're a dear boy, Tony," I said, crushed with remorse. "The kiss won't be a bribe, either. It will be a token of—of—I hardly know what. But partly of gratitude, the deepest gratitude, if you can trust me enough to believe I'll be true."