Then he went back, and sat down by the bed again, locking his dropped hands loosely between his knees, and looking steadily at the worn old colourless carpet.
"You see this Golda—" he began.
"Golda who?" Martie echoed.
"This girl I've been talking to this morning," Wallace supplied impatiently; "Golda White."
"Who is she?" Martie asked, bewildered, as his heavy voice stopped on the name.
"Oh, she's a girl I used to know! I haven't seen her for eight or ten years—since I left Portland, in fact."
"But who IS she, Wallie?" Martie had propped herself in pillows, she was wide awake now, and her voice was firm and quick.
"Well, wait and I'll tell you, I'll tell you the whole thing. I don't believe there's anything in it, but anyway, I'll tell you, and you and I can sort of talk it over. You see I met this girl in Portland, when I was a kid in my uncle's lumber office. I was about twenty-two or three, and she was ten years older than that. But we ran with the same crowd a lot, and I saw her all the time——"
"She was in the office?"
"Sure. She was Uncle Chester's steno. She was a queer sort of girl; pretty, too. I was sore because my father made me work there, and I wanted to join the navy or go to college, or go on the stage, and she'd sit there making herself collars and things, and sort of console me. She was engaged to a fellow in Los Angeles, or she said she was.