'We were together almost every evening.'
'Billy?' he demanded, with a savageness that startled her.
'Yes, of course, Billy. We were with each other so much… If I had only known… There was no one to tell me… I was so young-'
Her lips parted as though to speak further, and she regarded him anxiously.
'The scoundrel!'
With the explosion Ned Bashford was on his feet, no longer a tired Greek, but a violently angry young man.
'Billy is not a scoundrel; he is a good man,' Loretta defended, with a firmness that surprised Bashford.
'I suppose you'll be telling me next that it was all your fault,' he said sarcastically.
She nodded.
'What?' he shouted.
'It was all my fault,' she said steadily. 'I should never have let him. I was to blame.'
Bashford ceased from his pacing up and down, and when he spoke, his voice was resigned.
'All right,' he said. 'I don't blame you in the least, Loretta. And you have been very honest. But Billy is right, and you are wrong. You must get married.'
'To Billy?' she asked, in a dim, far-away voice.
'Yes, to Billy. I'll see to it. Where does he live? I'll make him.'
'But I don't want to marry Billy!' she cried out in alarm. 'Oh, Ned, you won't do that?'
'I shall,' he answered sternly. 'You must. And Billy must. Do you understand?'
Loretta buried her face in the cushioned chair back, and broke into a passionate storm of sobs.
All that Bashford could make out at first, as he listened, was: 'But I don't want to leave Daisy! I don't want to leave Daisy!'
He paced grimly back and forth, then stopped curiously to listen.
'How was I to know?-Boo-hoo,' Loretta was crying. 'He didn't tell me. Nobody else ever kissed me. I never dreamed a kiss could be so terrible… until, boo-hoo… until he wrote to me. I only got the letter this morning.'
His face brightened. It seemed as though light was dawning on him.
'Is that what you're crying about?'
'N-no.'
His heart sank.
'Then what are you crying about?' he asked in a hopeless voice.
'Because you said I had to marry Billy. And I don't want to marry Billy. I don't want to leave Daisy. I don't know what I want. I wish I were dead.'
He nerved himself for another effort.
'Now look here, Loretta, be sensible. What is this about kisses. You haven't told me everything?'
'I-I don't want to tell you everything.'
She looked at him beseechingly in the silence that fell.
'Must I?' she quavered finally.
'You must,' he said imperatively. 'You must tell me everything.'
'Well, then… must I?'
'You must.'
'He… I… we…' she began flounderingly. Then blurted out, 'I let him, and he kissed me.'
'Go on,' Bashford commanded desperately.
'That's all,' she answered.
'All?' There was a vast incredulity in his voice.
'All?' In her voice was an interrogation no less vast.
'I mean-er-nothing worse?' He was overwhelmingly aware of his own awkwardness.
'Worse?' She was frankly puzzled. 'As though there could be! Billy said-'
'When did he say it?' Bashford demanded abruptly.
'In his letter I got this morning. Billy said that my… our… our kisses were terrible if we didn't get married.'
Bashford's head was swimming.
'What else did Billy say?' he asked.
'He said that when a woman allowed a man to kiss her, she always married him-that it was terrible if she didn't. It was the custom, he said; and I say it is a bad, wicked custom, and I don't like it. I know I'm terrible,' she added defiantly, 'but I can't help it.'
Bashford absent-mindedly brought out a cigarette.
'Do you mind if I smoke?' he asked, as he struck a match.
Then he came to himself.
'I beg your pardon,' he cried, flinging away match and cigarette. 'I don't want to smoke. I didn't mean that at all. What I mean is-'
He bent over Loretta, caught her hands in his, then sat on the arm of the chair and softly put one arm around her.
'Loretta, I am a fool. I mean it. And I mean something more. I want you to be my wife.'
He waited anxiously in the pause that followed.
'You might answer me,' he urged.
'I will… if-'
'Yes, go on. If what?'
'If I don't have to marry Billy.'
'You can't marry both of us,' he almost shouted.
'And it isn't the custom… what… what Billy said?'
'No, it isn't the custom. Now, Loretta, will you marry me?'
'Don't be angry with me,' she pouted demurely.
He gathered her into his arms and kissed her.
'I wish it were the custom,' she said in a faint voice, from the midst of the embrace, 'because then I'd have to marry you, Ned dear… wouldn't I?'
JUST MEAT
He strolled to the corner and glanced up and down the intersecting street, but saw nothing save the oases of light shed by the street lamps at the successive crossings. Then he strolled back the way he had come. He was a shadow of a man, sliding noiselessly and without undue movement through the semi-darkness. Also he was very alert, like a wild animal in the jungle, keenly perceptive and receptive. The movement of another in the darkness about him would need to have been more shadowy than he to have escaped him.
In addition to the running advertisement of the state of affairs carried to him by his senses, he had a subtler perception, a FEEL, of the atmosphere around him. He knew that the house in front of which he paused for a moment, contained children. Yet by no willed effort of perception did he have this knowledge. For that matter, he was not even aware that he knew, so occult was the impression. Yet, did a moment arise in which action, in relation to that house, were imperative, he would have acted on the assumption that it contained children. He was not aware of all that he knew about the neighbourhood.
In the same way, he knew not how, he knew that no danger threatened in the footfalls that came up the cross street. Before he saw the walker, he knew him for a belated pedestrian hurrying home. The walker came into view at the crossing and disappeared on up the street. The man that watched, noted a light that flared up in the window of a house on the corner, and as it died down he knew it for an expiring match. This was conscious identification of familiar phenomena, and through his mind flitted the thought, 'Wanted to know what time.' In another house one room was lighted. The light burned dimly and steadily, and he had the feel that it was a sick-
