“I shall be, and I shall try to make you so.”
“As if I could be anything else,” sighed Billy, blissfully. “And now we can't have any misunderstandings, you see.”
“Of course not. Er—what's that?”
“Why, I mean that—that we can't ever repeat hose miserable weeks of misunderstanding. Everything is all explained up. I know, now, that you don't love Miss Winthrop, or just girls—any girl—to paint. You love me. Not the tilt of my chin, nor the turn of my head; but me.”
“I do—just you.” Bertram's eyes gave the caress his lips would have given had it not been for the presence of the man in the seat across the aisle of the sleeping-car.
“And you—you know now that I love you—just you?”
“Not even Arkwright?”
“Not even Arkwright,” smiled Billy.
There was the briefest of hesitations; then, a little constrainedly, Bertram asked:
“And you said you—you never had cared for Arkwright, didn't you?”