Kansas University Weekly.
199
"Yes," said the girl again. Then her calm voice continued. "But it grew rather tiresome toward the end."
"Oh," said Alex.
"Besides, it wasn't much even in its way," she went on. "You know Southern girls consider there are degrees, 'Engaged to be married' and 'Just engaged.'"
"And we were 'Just engaged' I suppose."
"Exactly," assented the girl.
Alex flipped the ash off his cigarette. "Oh!" he said again, but this time with a lengthened intonation that betokened a sudden realization of the position. He leaned against a post as he sat on the railing and thrusting his hand into his pocket pondered a moment. Then he seemed to take a sudden resolution. "And yet," he said, with a half passionate ring in his voice while the darkness hid the amused smile on his face, "and yet that evening when you met me down by the lilacs—your hands full of the white flowers that I crushed with my kisses,—that evening it seemed more than play to us. Did it not, Winnifred?" He bent over to her.
"It was moonlight, that night," she suggested with a faint contempt in her voice that endued the words with a casual meaning. She lay back quite still in her chair but her poise was rather that of a fence on guard than of the rest it stimulated.
Alex drew back and laughed a little. "And moonshine?" he added. But his action was involuntary and in the nature of an aside, and he quickly returned to his former manner.
"Then all your promises, all your sweet words and sweeter looks were of no meaning? And you never cared for me; Winifred, do you mean to tell me that your truth and honor upon which I so relied—that the dear faith on which I builted my love was—"
"That will do," interrupted the girl coldly and decisively, "we have had a month of that already, but 'the play is played out.' Now let's return to truth and leave the—"
"Moonshine," suggested Alex.
"Yes," said the girl, "let's come down to earnest and not juggle now any more than we can help."
"Have it your own way," answered Alex. "But really I don't think it's quite fair for you to spoil my fine flow of language in that unceremonious way. I thought I was doing uncommonly well. Now wasn't I? 'Honor bright,' don't you think that's the best I've done yet?' He was so whimsically in earnest about it that the girl laughed in spite of herself.
"Really," he went on, "though I don't like to praise myself—being modest by nature—I think that really was superb. Did you notice the little quiver in my voice when I said 'Winifred.' I've often tried that repressed emotion but never got it quite so well before. Of course, there is the provocation, the environment and etcetera."
"Will you never be serious?" demanded the the girl impatiently. "Will you always be the weather-cock-changeable, mocking and insincere."
Alex slipped more ash off his cigarette. "Now I've lived a long time in this mundane sphere" he observed, "but this is the first time I ever heard of a mocking, insincere weather-cock. It appears to me—"
The girl made a restless angry gesture. "There again!" she broke in, 'quibbling over trifles when a question of deepest import is under consideration. Oh how you have disappointed me! I used to admire you, but in this short month I have learned to despise you—you inspire only contempt in my mind. Your sentiment is like false glitter on gold that deceives the receiver by its glamour but vanishes leaving nothing in his grasp.
Alex threw his cigarette out into the yard and burst into a hearty laugh. "Well," he gasped, "for a 'nice derangement of epitaphs' I must say my dear, that you have done well. The false glitter on gold is good—exceedingly good!"
Winifred looked at him a moment with rage, hate and various other deadly sins warring in her eyes. "I think you're perfectly horrid!" she sobbed at last and fled into the house.
As for Alex, he smoked another cigarette, chuckled to himself and went off down the street whistling the "Honey Moon" two-step.