"But if you no longer care there can be no reason why I should not," said Dic, hardly knowing in the whirl of his surprise what he was saying.
Rita thought of the letter to Tom, and all the sympathetic instincts of her nature sprang up to protect Dic, and to save him from Sukey's wicked designs.
"Oh," she cried, falling back into her chair, "you surely did not believe me!"
"And you do care?" asked Dic, almost stunned by her sudden change of front. Rita's conduct had always been so sedate and sensible that he did not suppose she was possessed of ordinary feminine weaknesses.
"Oh, Dic," she replied, "I never thought you would desert me." Inconsistency may also be a jewel.
Dic concluded he was an incarnate mistake. Whichever way he turned, he seemed to be wrong.
"I desert you?" he exclaimed. "But you returned my ring and did not even answer my letter, and now your scorn—"
"What else could you expect?" asked the girl, in a passionate flow of tears.
"I don't know what I expected, but I certainly did not expect this," answered Dic, musing on the blessed fault of inconsistency that dwells in every normal woman's breast. "I did not expect this, or I should have acted differently toward her after you returned the ring. I would not have—I—I—God help me!" and he buried his face in his hands.
"You would not have done what, Dic? Tell me all." Her heart came to him in his trouble. He had sinned, but he was suffering, and that she could not bear.