"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she
cried, passionately. "Can you never be serious? Must you joke about
everything? I believe you will find something to laugh at in the
marriage service. That thing I have told you is the most serious and
horrible experience of my life, and yet you treat it as if I were
acting a part in a melodrama in a third-rate theatre! Sometimes I
think I hate you."
Dartmouth caught her in his arms and forced her to sit down again
beside him. "My dear girl," he said, "why is it that a woman can never
understand that when a man feels most he chaffs, especially if he has
cultivated the beastly habit. Your story stirred me powerfully; the
more so because such things do not happen to every-day girls--"
"Harold!"
"Do not wrong me; I am in dead earnest. As a plain matter of fact, I
never heard of anything so horrible. Thank heaven it happened when you
were so young! No woman's will and spirit could rise superior to such
a memory if it were a recent one. But am I forgiven?"
"As you are perfectly incorrigible, I suppose there is no use being
angry with you," she said, still with a little pout on her lips.
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