“I’ve seen it for some time. You’re infatuated with him.”
She lifted her chin and looked at him with eyes that blazed anger. “Now I know I’ve done right in giving you back your ring. I’m not going to—to quarrel with you because you insult me. It’s finished. That’s enough.”
A sob rose to her throat and choked her. She hurried on to escape him, the trail a blurred mist through her tears.
CHAPTER XXX
FATHOMS DEEP
The days followed each other, clear, sparkling, crisp, with mornings in which Betty’s lungs drew in a winey exhilaration of living, with evenings which shut the cabin on the slope of Pegleg Pass from a remote world of men and women engaged in a thousand activities.
Betty had time to think during the long winter nights after she had retired to her room. Some of her thoughts hurt. She was shocked at the termination of her engagement, at the manner of it. That was not the way it should have been done at all. She and Justin should have recognized frankly that their views of life could not be made to harmonize. They should have parted with esteem and friendship. Instead of which there had been a scene of which she was ashamed.
Her cheeks burned when she recalled his crass charge that she was infatuated with Hollister. Why hadn’t he been able to understand that she had signed a pact of friendship with the ex-service man? If he had done that, if he had been wise and generous and sympathetic instead of harsh and grudging, he would (so Betty persuaded herself) have won her heart completely. He had been given a great chance, and he had not been worthy of it.
Merrick had humiliated her, shattered for the time at least the gallant young egoism which made her the mistress of her world.
Her father came up as soon as he returned from Denver. She talked over with him the break with her fiancé. Clint supported her, with reservations that did not reach the surface.
“Never did like it,” he said bluntly, referring to her engagement. “Merrick’s a good man in his way, but not the one for you. I been figuring you’d see it. I’m glad this came up. His ideas about marriage are crusted. He’d put a wife in a cage and treat her well. That wouldn’t suit you, Bess. You’ve got to have room to try your wings.”