"Why didn't you tell me?"
"My dear! I made sure you'd heard it from Miriam Levey. And I wasn't sure where you were; you move about so, you know. I wonder what Miriam will give them! Something far more expensive than mine, I expect. And you ought to give them something too, Kitty. What's done's done, you know, and after all, lots of engagements are——"
But once more Kitty flashed out. "Oh, I shall give him a bottle of arnica, or whatever it is, for black eyes!"
Louie laughed almost hysterically at the joke. The tension was getting almost too much for her. "Oh, come, he isn't a wife-beater yet!" she protested.
"But he will be, that man!" Kitty cried aloud with frightening vehemence. "He'd do anything—anything—much he cares! Did you know I got lost the other night? In Lincolns Inn Fields; policemen coming up to me, if you please, and asking me where I lived! Much he cares! I believe it was her all the time—he never wanted me at all, and as soon as Archie's out of the way he goes and marries her! Miriam Levey herself says she can't help thinking it's funny—and I can't think what your game is either, to be going on as if it wasn't! I'll tell you what I think, if you want to know——"
"Hush, hush, hush!" came from Louie. She had her arms about Kitty. "Perhaps you're right, dear; he was cruel to you! And"—she rushed into another extemporisation—"I don't know that I would give him a present, after all. If one can't forgive an injury one can't, and it's no good pretending. He did wrong you, and perhaps he oughtn't to be let off, after all. I won't send him one either."
She said it because it was better to confine Kitty to her own wrongs than to allow her to approach a number of frightening unknown possibilities that began with black eyes. And apparently she succeeded. Kitty fell back on her own injury, and became a little calmer.
"Oh," she said cunningly, "but you'd have to send yours, and Miriam Levey'd have to send hers too—then, don't you see, I should be the only one who didn't, and he'd notice it! I just hope he does notice it. Serve him right. I wasn't as hard up for a fellow as all that—I carried on with a fellow at that breaking-up party. I did—you ask Mr. Mackie.... You do think Jeff never intended to marry me at all, don't you, Louie?" She peered curiously at Louie.
Well, better that, Louie thought. "I don't think he meant to for a single moment," she replied.
"Oh, the rotter. Come on, let's send your present now. We'll show him!..."