She asked herself why she had never before
realized how boyish he was.
"Marguerite," he said at once, as though the matter were to be
taken firmly in hand, "you treated me shabbily the night of your
party. It was unworthy of you. And I will not stand it. You
ought not be such a child!"
Her breath was taken away. She blanched and her eyes dilated as
she looked at him: the lash of words had never been laid on her.
"Are you calling me to account?" she asked. "Then I shall call you
to an account. When you came up to speak to grandmother and to
mamma and me, you spoke to us as though you were an indifferent
suitor of mine--as though I were a suitor of yours. As soon as you
were gone, mamma said to me: 'What have you been doing, Marguerite,
that he should think you are in love with him--that he should treat
us as though we all wished to catch him?'"
"That was a mistake of your mother's. But after what had passed
between us--"
"No matter what had passed between us, I do not think that a _man_
would virtually tell a girl's mother on her: a boy might."
He grew ashen; and he took his hand out of his pockets and
straightened himself from his slouchy lounging posture, and stood
before her, his head in the air on his long neck like a young stag
affronted and enraged.
"It is true, I have sometimes been too much like a boy with you,"
he said. "Have you made it possible for me to be anything else?"
"Then I'll make it possible for you now: to begin, I am too old to
be called to account for my actions--except by those who have the
right.
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