er than Harry, who was so like a brother?

The boy couldn't believe that she meant what she implied but would have
bitten off his tongue rather than put a direct question. "Is he such a
rotter?" he asked instead.

"He's not a rotter. He's just Martin--generous, sensitive, dead
straight and as reliable as a liner. You and he were made in twin
molds."

He flushed with pleasure--but it was like meeting a new Joan, a
serious, laughterless Joan, with an odd little quiver in her voice and
tears behind her eyes. He felt a new sense of responsibility by being
confided in. Older, too. It was queer--this sudden switch from
thoughtless gaiety to something which was like illness in a house and
which made Joan almost unrecognizable.

He began again. "But then--" and stopped.

"I'm the rotter," she said. "It's because of me that he's in Devon and
I'm at Easthampton, that he's sailing with your cousin, and I'm playing
the fool with Gilbert. I was a kid, Harry, and thought I might go on
being a kid for a bit, and everything has gone wrong and all the blame
is mine."

"You're only a kid now," said Harry, trying to find excuses for her. He
resented her taking all the blame.

She shook her head. "No, I'm not. I'm only pretending to be. I came to
Easthampton to pretend to be. All the time you've known me I've been
pretending,--pretending to pretend. I ceased to be a kid before the
spring was over,--when I came face to face with something I had driven
Martin to do and it broke me. I've been bluffing since then,--bluffing
myself that I didn't care and that it wasn't my fault. I might have
kept it up a bit longer,--even to the end of the summer, but Gilbert
said something this morning that took the lynch pin out of the sham and
brought it all about my ears."

And there was another short silence,--if it could be called silence
with the whirring of the engine and the boy driving with the throttle
out.

"You care for him, then?" he asked finally, looking at her.

She nodded and the tears came.

It was a great shock to him, somehow; he couldn't quite say why. This
girl had, as she had said, played the fool with Gilbert,--led the man
on and teased him into desperation. He loathed the supercilious fellow
and didn't give a hang how much he suffered. Anyway, he was married and
ought to have known better. But what hit was the fact that all the
while she had loved this Martin of hers,--she, by whom he dated things,
who had given him a ne