That was her own fault and the girl fully realized it. She had dismissed him with an abruptness that must have hurt the aviator if he cared for her at all. And Belinda was positive that he did care.
She could not forget "Stella" and "the kiddies." She told herself stoutly at first that she wished nothing to do with a man such as Frank Sanderson had proved himself to be. Yet her intimacy with the young aviator back in the New York hospital and on board ship had revealed no characteristic of his nature that bore out the suspicions of him which had been bred in her heart and mind.
This was why her thought returned ever and again to the careless, cheerful, smiling American. He would make, she was sure, the very highest type of pilote.
The characteristics that made him what he was seemed to deny the possibility of his playing fast and loose with any woman. Belinda could not understand these contradictions.
In the loneliness of her poor lodging at night these and similar thoughts fastened upon her mind. How she had been interested in him from the very first! When he was brought into the New York hospital—wounded and delirious—Sanderson had appealed to her as no other young man had ever appealed.
Was it because she was now so lonely that she could not scatter these thoughts—that she could not drive his spirit away from her? Was it because she was away from friends and amid strange and trying surroundings that she was so weak? She tried to excuse herself by admitting these reasons for a time; but at length she had to face the thing out.
Belinda Melnotte was no coward. The turmoil in her soul could not go on for long without arousing scorn for herself.
"Why, he is not worthy of my thought," she told herself bitterly. "A married man! A man with wife and children! Oh! I should be ashamed of myself! I who call myself good!
"This certainly cannot be love. He has a fascination for me; just as Doctor Herschall inspires me with disgust—with hate! Am I different from other girls? Is there something wrong with me—something innately bad? I do love him! I do! I do! And I hate myself for it!"
She threw herself upon her bed, muffling her sobs in the pillow. This acknowledgment of what she termed her weakness in caring so deeply for Frank Sanderson seared her very soul. And her agony was the heavier because she had nobody in whom she might confide.