Owlet
ain't the sort of man to find a gay young spark like Tom much to his
taste."
"You must listen," she said, "and God forgive me for saying what I'm going
to say, but I can't live a lie no more, William, and Tom can't live a lie
no more. He loves me and I love him. I thought I loved you, and do love
you most sure and true and never better than now; but I don't love you
like I love him."
Then she poured it all out--how they'd found their real selves in each
other and so on--and I couldn't make up my mind on the instant whether she
spoke true, or whether she only thought she did. Being a proud sort of
man, I very well knew that there'd be no great fuss and splutter on my
side in any case, nor yet no silly attempts to keep her if her heart was
gone; but she appeared so excited and so properly frantic and so torn in
half between what she felt for Tom Bond and what she felt for me, that I
perceived how I must go steady and larn a lot more about the facts before
I stood down. There was my self-respect, of course, but there was also my
deep affection for the girl. What did amaze me was that I'd never seen the
thing unfolding under my eyes, and that none of the staff had called my
attention to it. But none had--man or woman--and when, afterwards, I asked
one or two of the elder ones if they'd marked any improprieties I ought to
know about, all said they had not.
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