There came a quick step, the click of a key in the lock, then the door swung back and Bertram, big, strong, and merry-eyed, stood before her.
“Well, well, hullo,” he called jovially. “Why, Billy, what's the matter?” he broke off, in quite a different tone of voice.
And then a curious thing happened. Billy, who, a minute before, had been seeing only a dear, noble, adorable, lost Bertram, saw now suddenly only the man that had stayed happily till midnight with two friends, while she—she—
“Matter! Matter!” exclaimed Billy sharply, then. “Is this what you call staying to dinner, Bertram Henshaw?”
Bertram stared. A slow red stole to his forehead. It was his first experience of coming home to meet angry eyes that questioned his behavior—and he did not like it. He had been, perhaps, a little conscience-smitten when he saw how late he had stayed; and he had intended to say he was sorry, of course. But to be thus sharply called to account for a perfectly innocent good time with a couple of friends—! To come home and find Billy making a ridiculous scene like this—! He—he would not stand for it! He—
Bertram's lips snapped open. The angry retort was almost spoken when something in the piteously quivering chin and white, drawn face opposite stopped it just in time.
“Why, Billy—darling!” he murmured instead.
It was Billy's turn to change. All the anger melted away before the dismayed tenderness in those dear eyes and the grieved hurt in that dear voice.
“Well, you—you—I—” Billy began to cry.
It was all right then, of course, for the next minute she was crying on Bertram's big, broad shoulder; and in the midst of broken words, kisses, gentle pats, and inarticulate croonings, the Big, Bad Quarrel, that had been all ready to materialize, faded quite away into nothingness.