Henry sat completely baffled, with a choking sensation in his throat. Yet—yet it must be that the girl could be got to see a moral chasm wide as the Grand Canyon. He must make another effort; he left the car and confronted her.
Billie faced him defiantly. Offended majesty, injured pride, hurt love, unbelievable disappointment, thwarted self-will, childish petulance—she got them all into her air. "When men fight my father he breaks them like this!" she warned haughtily, and her quick hands made the gesture of snapping a twig and casting it disdainfully aside.
"But, Billie!" Henry protested feebly. "I—I thought you loved me."
Her scorn was quick. "I—I thought I loved you too," she astonished him by retorting; "but . . . can a woman love a fool?" Dramatically her glance circled upward to the sky as in mute protest that God could have played her such a trick as make her love a fool. It was the artifice that did it. Henry became angry.
"If I—if I am that," he had begun hotly, when the sudden change in his manner made her see him with different eyes, take re-account of him—who he was. Her impatient rage had been more like an explosion than a conflagration anyway. Revulsion was swift but—amusingly, femininely uncompromising.
"Oh, why did I let myself love you?" she cried in a voice teary with utter exasperation, and the next moment had flung herself into his arms and was weeping on his shoulder.
"Henry!" she cried and hugged him to her. "Henry!" Her sobs beat against the drums of his ears; her kisses were warm and moist upon his neck. "I don't want
