“Billy, do you think any girl would marry—me?” he demanded.
“Why, Cyril!”
“There, now, please don't begin that,” he begged fretfully. “I realize, of course, that I'm a very unlikely subject for matrimony. You made me understand that clearly enough last winter!”
“Last—winter?”
Cyril raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, I came to you for a little encouragement, and to make a confession,” he said. “I made the confession—but I didn't get the encouragement.”
Billy changed color. She thought she knew what he meant, but at the same time she couldn't understand why he should wish to refer to that conversation now.
“A—confession?” she repeated, hesitatingly.
“Yes. I told you that I'd begun to doubt my being such a woman-hater, after all. I intimated that YOU'D begun the softening process, and that then I'd found a certain other young woman who had—well, who had kept up the good work.”
“Oh!” cried Billy suddenly, with a peculiar intonation. “Oh-h!” Then she laughed softly.