“I don't wish to know. Preserve me from knowing! Why didn't you choose somebody different?”
He looked at her with all his passion in his eyes. “I did not choose. Did you?”
“It isn't too late,” she whispered. Her face grew hot in the darkness.
“Yes; it is too late—for anything but the truth. Will you listen, sweet? Will you let the nonsense wait?”
“Deeper and deeper! Haven't we reached the bottom yet?”
“Go on! It's the dearest nonsense,” she heard him say; but she detected pain in his voice and a new constraint.
“What is it? What is the 'truth'?”
“Oh, it's not so dreadful. Only, you always put me in quite a different class from where I belong, and I haven't had the courage to set you right.”
“Children, children!” a young voice called, from the lighted walk above. Two figures were going down the line, one in uniform keeping step beside a girl in white who reefed back her skirts with one hand, the other was raised to her hair which was blowing across her forehead in bewitching disorder. Every gesture and turn of her shape announced that she was pretty and gay in the knowledge of her power. It was Chrissy, walking with Lieutenant Lane.
“Where are you—ridiculous ones? Don't you want to come with us?”