She leaned forward in her chair, her pretty hands joined between her knees.
"Please," she said, "don't say you'll come if you are not coming."
"But I am—"
"I know you said so twice before.... I don't mean to be horrid or to reproach you, but—I am going to tell you—I was disappointed—even a—a little—unhappy. And it—lasted—some time.... So, if you are not coming, tell me so now.... It is hard to wait—too long."
"Athalie," he said, completely surprised by the girl's frank avowal and by the unsuspected emotion in himself which was responding, "I am—I had no idea—I don't deserve your kindness to me—your loyalty—I'm a—I'm a—a pup! That's what I am—an undeserving, ungrateful, irresponsible, and asinine pup! That's what all boys in college are—but it's no excuse for not keeping my word—for making you unhappy—"
"C. Bailey, Junior, you were just a boy. And I was a child.... I am still, in spite of my nineteen years—nearly twenty at that—not much different, not enough changed to know that I'm a woman. I feel exactly as I did toward you—not grown up,—or that you have grown up.... Only I know, somehow, I'd have a harder time of it now, if you tell me you'll come, and then—"
"I will come, Athalie! I want to," he said impetuously. "You're more interesting,—a lot jollier,—than any girl I know. I always suspected it, too—the bigger fool I to lose all that time we might have had together—"
She, surprised for a moment, lifted her pretty head and laughed outright, checking his somewhat impulsive monologue. And he looked at her, disturbed.
"I'm only laughing because you speak of all those years we might have had together, as though—" And suddenly she checked herself in her turn, on the brink of saying something that was not so funny after all.