The boy couldn't believe that she meant what she implied but would have bitten off his tongue rather than put a direct question. "Is he such a rotter?" he asked instead.
"He's not a rotter. He's just Martin—generous, sensitive, dead straight and as reliable as a liner. You and he were made in twin molds."
He flushed with pleasure—but it was like meeting a new Joan, a serious, laughterless Joan, with an odd little quiver in her voice and tears behind her eyes. He felt a new sense of responsibility by being confided in. Older, too. It was queer—this sudden switch from thoughtless gaiety to something which was like illness in a house and which made Joan almost unrecognizable.
He began again. "But then—" and stopped.
"I'm the rotter," she said. "It's because of me that he's in Devon and I'm at Easthampton, that he's sailing with your cousin, and I'm playing the fool with Gilbert. I was a kid, Harry, and thought I might go on being a kid for a bit, and everything has gone wrong and all the blame is mine."
"You're only a kid now," said Harry, trying to find excuses for her. He resented her taking all the blame.
She shook her head. "No, I'm not. I'm only pretending to be. I came to Easthampton to pretend to be. All the time you've known me I've been pretending,—pretending to pretend. I ceased to be a kid before the spring was over,—when I came face to face with something I had driven Martin to do and it broke me. I've been bluffing since then,—bluffing myself that I didn't care and that it wasn't my fault. I might have kept it up a bit longer,—even to the end of the summer, but Gilbert said something this morning that took the lynch pin out of the sham and brought it all about my ears."
And there was another short silence,—if it could be called silence with the whirring of the engine and the boy driving with the throttle out.
"You care for him, then?" he asked finally, looking at her.
She nodded and the tears came.