“Good thing he has changed,” replied Blake. 225 “If Miss Chuckie hadn’t told us he had made a clean breast of that bridge, I should begin to feel worried about––Do you know, Sweetheart, it’s the strangest thing in the world the way I feel towards that girl. It’s not because she is so lovely. Of course I enjoy her beauty, but that’s not it. If Tommy were a girl and grown up––that’s how I feel.”
“She is a very dear, sweet girl.”
“So are several of your friends––our friends,” said Blake. “This is different. The very first day we met her, there was something about her voice and face––seemed as though I already knew her.”
“She knew you, through what she had read of you. She warned me, in that frank, charming way of hers, that you were a hero to her and I must not mind if she worshiped you openly.”
Blake laughed pleasedly. “Isn’t she the greatest! And the way she chums with me! Wonder if that is what makes Ashton so sore at me? The idiot! Can’t he see the difference?”
“Lovers always are blind,” said Genevieve.
“I’m not,” he rejoined, his eyes, as he gazed down into hers, as blue and tender as Isobel’s.
The young wife blushed deliciously and rewarded him with a kiss.
“But about Chuckie?” she returned to the previous question. “You were going to tell me––”
“I am going to tell you something you will think 226 is very fanciful––and it is! Do you know why I am so taken with that girl? It’s because she reminds me of my sisters––what they might have grown to be!... God!––” he bent over with his face in his shaking hands––“God! If only they had gone any other way than––the way they did!”