of his
knotted fists with a trembling hand.

"Kill her?... Good Lord, _no_!" the boy flung at her violently. "I'm not
such an ass as that! You girls are all alike! Polly had so little sense
as to think I'd want to kill Nita and Sprague both! She couldn't see,
and neither could Clive, that all I wanted was to get away from
everybody and get so drunk I could forget what a fool I'd been--"

"What _did_ you do, Ralph?" Penny asked urgently.

"Why, I got drunk, of course," the boy answered, as if surprised at her
persistence. "Darling, you wouldn't believe me if I told you how much
rot-gut Scotch it took to put me under, but that filthy bootlegging
hotel clerk would have charged me twice what he did for the stuff if he
had known how much good it would do me."

"Hotel?" Penny snatched at the vital word. "Where did you go to get
drunk, Ralph?"

"I never realized before you had so much curiosity, honey," the boy
grinned at her. "After I shook Clive--Polly went on to Nita's bridge
party, because she couldn't throw her down at the last minute--I
wandered around till I came to the Railroad Men's Hotel, down on State
Street, you know, the other side of the tracks. It's a miserable dump,
but I sort of hankered for a place to hide in that was as miserable and
cheap as I felt--"

"Did you register under your own name?"

"Ashamed of me, Penny?... No, I registered under my first two
names--Ralph Edwards. And the rat-faced, filthy little hotel clerk
turned out to be a bootlegger.... Well, when I woke up about eleven this
morning I give you my word I wasn't sick and headachy, though God knows
I'd drunk enough to put me out for a week.... Penny, I woke up
feeling--well, I can't explain it but to say I felt light and new
and--and clean.... All washed-up! At first I thought my heart was
empty--it felt so free of pain. But as I lay there thanking God that
_that was that_, I found my heart wasn't empty at all. It was brimming
full of love--Gosh, honey! I sound like a Laura Jean Libbey hero, don't
I?... But before I rang you from the lunch room where I ate breakfast I
wrote Nita a special delivery note, telling her it was all off. I had to
be free actually, before I could ask you.... You _will_ marry me, won't
you, Penny honey?... I knew this morning I had never really loved anyone
else--"

Penelope Crain remained rigid for a moment, then very slowly she laid
both her hands on his head, for he had knelt and buried his face against
he