Cummings.—"Oh, no; I wasn't thinking of the circumstances; but it seemed so out of character for you"—
Bartlett, impatiently.—"Oh, love's always out of character, just as it's always out of reason. I admit freely that I'm an ass. And then?"
Cummings.—"Well, then, I don't believe you have any more reason to be in despair than you have to be in love. If she tolerates you, as you say, it can't be because you look like the man who jilted her."
Bartlett.—"Ah! But if she still loves him?"
Cummings.—"You don't know that. That strikes me as a craze of jealousy. What makes you think she tolerates you for that reason or no-reason?"
Bartlett.—"What makes me think it? From the very first she interpreted me by what she knew of him. She expected me to be this and not to be that; to have one habit and not another; and I could see that every time the fact was different, it was a miserable disappointment to her, a sort of shock. Every little difference between me and that other rascal gave her a start; and whenever I looked up I found her wistful eyes on me as if they were trying to puzzle me out; they used to follow me round the room like the eyes of a family portrait. You wouldn't have liked it yourself, Cummings. For the first three weeks I simply existed on false pretences,—involuntary false pretences, at that. I wanted to explode; I wanted to roar out. If you think I'm at all like that abandoned scoundrel of yours in anything but looks, I'm not! But I was bound by everything that was decent, to hold my tongue, and let my soul be rasped out of me in silence and apparent unconsciousness. That was your fault. If you hadn't told me all about the thing, I could have done something outrageous and stopped it. But I was tied hand and foot by what I knew. I had to let it go on."
Cummings.—"I'm very sorry, Bartlett, but"—
Bartlett.—"Oh, I dare say you wouldn't have done it if you hadn't had a wild ass of the desert to deal with. Well, the old people got used to some little individuality in me, by-and-by, and beyond a suppressed whoop or two from the mother when I came suddenly into the room, they didn't do anything to annoy me directly. But they were anxious every minute for the effect on her; and it worried me as much to have them watching her as to have her watching me. Of course I knew that she talked this confounded resemblance over with her mother every time I left them, and avoided talking it over with the father."
Cummings.—"But you say the trouble's over now."