"Ward, you certainly are--the limit! You know as well as I do that that doesn't make a particle of difference. If I had been a boy instead of a girl, and had bucked the world for a living, I'd probably have done worse; and, anyway, it doesn't matter!" Her voice rose as if she were growing desperate. "I--I--like you--to pieces, Ward, and I'd--I'd rather marry you--than anyone else. But I don't want to think about that for a long while. I don't want to be engaged, or--or any different than the way we've been. It was good to be just pals. It was like my pretend Ward. I--I always wanted him--to love me, but I wouldn't play that he--told me, Ward. Oh, don't you see?" She shut her teeth hard together, because if she hadn't she would have been crying in another ten seconds.
"I see." Ward spoke dully, evenly, and he still stared at the coffee-pot with that gimlet gaze of his that made Billy Louise want to scream. "I see a whole lot that I'd been shutting my eyes to. Why don't you feel insulted--"
"Ward Warren, if you're going to act like a--a--" I suspect that Billy Louise, in her desperation, was tempted to use a swear word, but she resisted the temptation. She got up and went around to him, hesitated while she looked down at his set face, drew a long breath, and blinked back some tears of self-reproach because of the devils of memory she had unwittingly turned loose to jibe at this man.
"This is why," she said softly; and leaning, she pressed her lips down upon his bitter ones and let them lie there for a dozen heart-beats.
Ward's face relaxed, and his eyes went to hers with the hungry tenderness she had seen so often there. He leaned his head against her and threw up an arm to clasp her close. He did not say a word.
"After I have kissed a man," said Billy Louise, struggling back to her old whimsical manner, "it won't be a bit polite for him to have any doubts of my feelings toward him, or my belief in him, or his belief in himself." Her fingers tangled themselves in his hair, just where the wave was the most pronounced.
She had drawn the poison. Now she set herself to restore a perfectly normal atmosphere.
"He's going to be just exactly the same good pal he was before," she went on, speaking softly. "And he's going to bring some water so I can wash the dishes, and then bring Blue so I can go home, and he isn't going to say a single thing more about--anything that matters two whoops."