"Well?" Persis' tone was crisply interrogative. "What happened?"
"Why, she looked so like a kitten, Persis, that you can't hardly help petting, that I put my arm around her. And I—" He cleared his throat, his eyes, fortunately for his resolution, fixed upon the floor. "Well, I might as well make a clean breast of it. I did kiss her. Of course I ought to be ashamed—"
"Yes." Persis agreed icily. "You ought."
She had listened with a sort of sickened revolt to Thomas' stammered confession. Nothing that Annabel Sinclair could do would surprise her, nor did she wonder when boys of Thad West's age yielded to her lure. But that this man, this staid, stanch Thomas, on whom she had counted more implicitly than she knew, should have proved so easy a victim shook her native faith in humankind. "All men are alike," thought Persis, in her haste betrayed into one of those sweepingly unjust generalizations such as King David penitently acknowledged.
Thomas' eyes came up from the carpet at her tone. He looked at her with a sort of terror. The fixed sternness of her face made her seem a stranger. Little as he had relished the idea of acknowledging his bygone weakness, he had not dreamed of a result like this.
For a moment he gazed at her with dumb appeal, then faltered: "I was—was afraid you'd be disgusted with me, Persis."
"I am."
He swallowed hard as if her answer were a mouthful that resisted mastication. For a little they sat silent. Persis picked up her work and resumed her sewing with a brave show of indifference though the seam ran into a blur before her eyes. And at last Thomas spoke.
"I'm sorry you take it this way, Persis, but it couldn't be helped. I had to clear up things before—I didn't feel it would be fair to ask you anything that would bind you till you knew the worst about me. And now—"
There was another long silence. Then Thomas found himself upon his feet, feeling for his hat, groping like a blind man.