“It is not! It’s mangy!” She turned toward him. She wailed, “Oh, Mart, I’m so sick of myself, to-night. I’m always trying to make people think I’m somebody. I’m not. I’m a bluff.”
“What is it, dear?”
“Oh, it’s lots. Dr. Brumfit, hang him—only he was right—he as good as told me that if I don’t work harder I’ll have to get out of the graduate school. I’m not doing a thing, he said, and if I don’t have my Ph.D., then I won’t be able to land a nice job teaching English in some swell school, and I’d better land one, too, because it doesn’t look to poor Madeline as if anybody was going to marry her.”
His arm about her, he blared, “I know exactly who—”
“No, I’m not fishing. I’m almost honest, to-night. I’m no good, Mart. I tell people how clever I am. And I don’t suppose they believe it. Probably they go off and laugh at me!”
“They do not! If they did— I’d like to see anybody that tried laughing—”
“It’s awfully sweet and dear of you, but I’m not worth it. The poetic Madeline! With her ree-fined vocabulary! I’m a— I’m a— Martin, I’m a tin-horn sport! I’m everything your friend Clif thinks I am. Oh, you needn’t tell me. I know what he thinks. And— I’ll have to go home with mother, and I can’t stand it, dear, I can’t stand it! I won’t go back! That town! Never anything doing! The old tabbies, and the beastly old men, always telling the same old jokes. I won’t!”
Her head was in the hollow of his arm; she was weeping, hard; he was stroking her hair, not covetously now but tenderly, and he was whispering:
“Darling! I almost feel as if I dared to love you. You’re going to marry me and— Take me couple more years to finish my medical course and couple in hospital, then we’ll be married and— By thunder, with you helping me, I’m going to climb to the top! Be big surgeon! We’re going to have everything!”
“Dearest, do be wise. I don’t want to keep you from your scientific work—”