"You do, perfectly well," I stormed. "I can't stand it. I am going
crazy."
"Oh," he said slowly. "I see. I've been dancing too much with the
little girl with the eyes! Honestly, Bab, I was only doing it to disarm
suspicion. MY EVERY THOUGHT IS OF YOU."
"I mean," I said, as firmly as I could, "that this whole thing has got
to stop. I can't stand it."
"Am I to understand," he said solemnly, "that you intend to end
everything?"
I felt perfectly wild and helpless.
"After that Letter!" he went on. "After that sweet Letter! You said, you
know, that you were mad to see me, and that--it is almost too sacred
to repeat, even to YOU--that you would always love me. After that
Confession I refuse to agree that all is over. It can NEVER be over."
"I daresay I am losing my mind," I said. "It all sounds perfectly
natural. But it doesn't mean anything. There CAN'T be any Harold
Valentine; because I made him up. But there is, so there must be. And I
am going crazy."
"Look here," he stormed, suddenly quite raving, and throwing out his
right hand. It would have been terrably dramatic, only he had a glass of
punch in it. "I am not going to be played with. And you are not going to
jilt me without a reason. Do you mean to deny everything? Are you going
to say, for instance, that I never sent you any violets? Or gave you my
Photograph, with an--er--touching inscription on it?" Then, appealingly,
"You can't mean to deny that Photograph, Bab!"
And then that lanky wretch of an Eddie Perkins brought me a toy Baloon,
and I had to dance, with my heart crushed.
Nevertheless, I ate a fair supper. I felt that I needed Strength. It was
quite a grown-up supper, with boullion and creamed chicken and baked ham
and sandwitches, among other things. But of course they had to show it
was a `kid' party, after all. For instead of coffee we had milk.
Milk! When I was going through a tradgedy. For if it is not a tradgedy
to be engaged to a man one never saw before, what is it?
All through the refreshments I could feel that his eyes were on me. And
I hated him. It was all well enough for Jane to say he was handsome. She
wasn't going to have to marry him. I detest dimples in chins. I always
have. And anybody could see that it was his first mustache, and
soft, and that he took it round like a mother pushing a new baby in a
perambulater. It was sickning.