She told him at last,—told him everything, walking slowly by his side with her eyes cast down and her hands clasped tight behind her.
When she had finished, there was an immense intolerable silence, and slowly, very slowly, she permitted her glance to rise to her companion’s face, to grasp the effect of her narration upon him.
How rare it is that these world-shaking revelations produce the impression one has anticipated! To Vennie’s complete amazement,—and even, it must be allowed, a little to her dismay,—Dangelis regarded her with a frank untroubled smile.
“You,—I—” she stammered, and stopped abruptly. Then, before he could answer her, “I didn’t know you knew all this. Did you really know it,—and not mind? Don’t people mind these things in—in other countries?”
Dangelis spoke at last. “Oh, yes of course, we mind as much as any of you; that is to say, if we do mind,—but you must remember, Miss Seldom, there are circumstances, situations,—there are, in fact feelings,—which make these things sometimes rather a relief than otherwise!”
He threw up his stick in the air, as he spoke, and caught it as it descended.
“Pardon me, one moment, I want—I want to see if I can jump this ditch.”
He threw both stick and hat on the ground, and to Vennie’s complete amazement, stepped back a pace or two, and running desperately to the brink of the stream cleared it with a bound. He repeated this manœuvre from the further bank, and returned, breathing hard and fast, to the girl’s side.
Picking up his hat and stick, he uttered a wild series of barbaric howls, such howls as Vennie had never, in her life, heard issuing from the mouth of man or beast. Had Gladys’ treachery turned his brain?
But no madman could possibly have smiled the friendly boyish smile with which he greeted her when this performance was over.