“‘Smile of understanding’! He won’t want me to smile at all pretty soon.” She sighed. “By next week he’ll be ‘appealing’ to me. He’ll be sure to come back, if I keep still. He always does. I know David! I’ve half a mind not to answer him when he does ‘appeal.’ Let him have a taste of his own porridge.”
She went over the letter again, slowly, sentence by sentence.
Miss Polly: Since it is plainly evident that you desire your freedom from the slender bonds that bind us together, I wish to assure you that from this moment they are broken, and you are free as if they had never been. To continue the relations which have existed between us for the few years past would only pile up wretchedness for us both, and it is best to annul them. Many times I have foreseen this. On the day we took that walk to Chimney Hill and I noted the smile of understanding which passed between you and that darned Ely, I knew that sooner or later this would come. Yesterday when I heard of your intimacy with the same unbearable puppy, your rides alone with him as soon as I was out of the way, convinced me that the time for the break has arrived. You need not attempt any explanation or appeal. My mind is made up forever. Nothing can change my decision.
Very truly yours
David Gresham Collins
“‘Slender bonds’!” she muttered. “I didn’t know that I was bound at all, though I act as if I were. Of course, I’m ‘free,’ and I will be free, too, David Collins! As if you must tell me so! I wish I’d gone over to the Inn with Russell—I will next time he asks me. I won’t be under David’s thumb any longer! To think of his making such a fuss because I rode up with Russell—just rode up the hill with him!
“But how did he hear of my being with him?” Polly questioned. “We didn’t meet anybody—yes, Doris Gaylord was out on the veranda. She may have seen me. I didn’t think so. Anything she knew, Marietta’d know—that is sure. And by this time Marietta may be up there herself.”
She pondered the matter for some minutes, while alternately her face flushed and paled.
“Could Marietta—?” She shut her lips with a contemptuous little breath. “Let her!” she scorned. “I won’t follow David Collins’s lead.”
CHAPTER III
DAVID MAKES A REQUEST
THE next morning Polly was at the door as usual when the letter-carrier came. She could not have told why. Certainly she did not expect a letter.