Stover felt on the instant the most overpowering desire to confide his whole life's history, and being under the influence of a genuine emotion as well as aided by the obliterating hour, he began straight forward to relate the story of his months of Coventry in tense, direct sentences, without pausing to calculate either their vividness or their effect. Once started, he withheld nothing, neither the agony of his pride nor the utter hopelessness of that isolation. Once or twice he hesitated, blurting out:
"I say, does this bore you?"
And each time she answered quickly:
"No, no—go on."
They went back in the fallen night to the campus, and there he pointed out the spot where he had stood and listened to the singing on the Esplanade and made up his mind to return. All at once, his story ended and he perceived, to his utter confusion, that he had been pouring out his heart to some one whose face he couldn't see, some one who was probably smiling at his impetuous confidence, some one whom he had met only a few hours before.
"Oh, I say," he said in horror, "you must think me an awful fool to go on like this."
"No."
"You made me tell you, you know," he said miserably, wondering what she could think of him. "I never talked like this before—to any one. I don't know what made me confide in you."
This was untrue, for he knew perfectly well what had led him to speak. So did she and, knowing full well what was working in the tense, awkward boy beside her, she had no feeling of offense, being at an age when such tributes, when genuine, are valued, not scorned.
"I can just feel how you felt—poor boy," she said, perhaps not entirely innocent of the effect of her words. "But then, you have won out, haven't you?"