"Well, I won't torment you, though I am inclined to think you deserve it. It appears that Gail had learned from that friend of hers, Laura Ward, to whom she had spoken of you and your people, that you posed as a model for a couple of artists, just before you left this city, in order to earn money for gowns. The girl lived in the same studio building with them ... their name was Morrow, I think. She was under the impression that you were a professional model till the Morrows explained, and you had struck her as such a very good type that she remembered you and the whole episode. Gail was teasing you about it, as she teases every one. She has a provocative, half-mocking manner that she lets go too far sometimes. I'm not inclined to forgive her for tormenting my little girl."
Joy gave a long sigh of relief.
"Then—you're not engaged to Gail?"
He gave the hands he held a little half-impatient, half-loving shake.
"Would I have asked you to marry me under those circumstances?"
"You never asked me to marry you," said Joy in a subdued voice. She felt as if the world were coming down around her ears. "I was a trial fiancée, and a good deal of a trial at that, as you said. And—you only did it to oblige me, and—and I'm very much obliged and—and hadn't you better go?"
If he stayed much longer——
His voice, that had been light, became more tender and more serious.
"Joy, do you think I could see much of you without caring for you? When I first met you I took you for a child, and there was so much of the child about you afterwards that, when I yielded to an impulse and helped you out of your dilemma I scarcely knew I was in love with you. But it didn't take me long after that to find it out. And my only fear was that you were going through it all in the same childlike spirit, that you couldn't care for me. But when I asked you if you belonged to me, and you said—do you remember? You always were human—for me'—why—" his voice became happier again, for she had not drawn away, "why, I thought I was asking you to marry me. And I thought you were saying you would. But if you weren't.... Don't you care, Joy? Aren't you mine? It doesn't seem as if you could be any one else's."
His voice broke.