"You love him now," he charged, his fury mounting again.
"I don't! I love you."
"This is a hell of a thing to tell a man you say you love," he faltered plaintively.
"You'd rather I hadn't told you. I'm not built that way! I had to tell."
Instantly he was suspicious. "Had to? Why did you have to?"
"Not for any reason that you'd understand." The slight emphasis on the "you" was the first touch of bitterness she had allowed herself.
"Wouldn't he marry you?"
"I wouldn't marry him."
Monty perceptibly brightened. Pat's womanly intuitions, supersensitised by the strain of the contest, told her why. If, to his male standards, she was a maiden despoiled, she was at least not a woman scorned; her rating had gone up sensibly.
"Where is he now?"