He drew in his breath slowly.
"Tell me," she said, still tensely poised, her eyes insistent in the shadow of her hair.
"Miss Dalrymple—Betty—" he half stammered.
"I want to know," she repeated. There was an inexorable demand in her gaze. Mr. Heatherbloom straightened. The ordeal?—it must be met—though that box of Pandora were best left unopened. He could not refuse her anything; this she asked of him was not easy to grant, however.
"Where shall I begin?" he said uncertainly. "You know a great deal.
There doesn't seem much worth talking about."
"Begin where we left off—"
"Our boy-and-girl engagement? You broke it. Quite right of you!" She stirred slightly. "It was, at best, but a perfunctory business, half arranged by our parents to keep the millions together—"
"You never blamed me a little, then?" she asked.
"I—blame you?" wonderingly. "You were as far from me as a star. What you thought of me, you told me; it was all right—true stuff. Though it sank in like a blade. I was nothing—worse than nothing. A rich man's son!—a commonplace type. A good fellow some called me at Monte Carlo, Paris, elsewhere." He paused. A moment he seemed another personality—that other one. She saw it anew, caught a glimpse of it like a flash on a mirror; then he seemed to relapse farther back into the shadow. "I really don't want to bore you," he said perfunctorily, raising an uncertain hand to the stray; lock on his forehead.
"You aren't—doing that. Go on." Her eyes were full of questions. "After I saw you that last time"—he nodded—"you disappeared. No one ever heard anything of you; again, or knew what had become of you."