He forced himself to a relentless description of his father and mother, of the livery stable, of the failure, of his acceptance of the privilege to be a paid by the week guardian on a horse of the beautiful Sylvia Planter. The only point he left obscure was the sentimental basis of his quarrel with her.
"I was impertinent," he ended. "She called me an impertinent servant, a stable boy, other pleasant names. She had me fired, or would have, if I hadn't been going anyway. Now you know how I've lied to you and what I am!"
He waited, arms half raised, as one awaits an inevitable blow. For a minute she continued to stare. Then she stepped nearer. Although he had suffered to win an opposite response, she did what he had forced Lambert Planter to do.
"No wonder Lambert admires you," she said, warmly. "To do so much from such a beginning! I knew at first you were different from—from us. You're not now. It's——"
She broke off, drawing away a little again. He struggled to keep his hands from her white, slender figure, from her hair, yellow in the moonlight.
"You don't understand," he said, desperately. "This thing that you say I've become is only veneer. It may have thickened, but it's still veneer."
It hurt to say that more than anything else, for all along he had been afraid it was the truth.
"Underneath the veneer," he went on, "I'm the mucker, the stable boy if you like. If I were anything else I would have told you all this years ago. Betty! Betty!"
She drew farther away. He thought her voice was frightened, not quite clear.
"Please! Don't say anything more now. I'd rather not. I—I——Listen! What difference does it make to me or anybody where you came from? You're what you are, what you always have been since I've known you. It was brave to tell me. I know that. I'm going now. Please——"