Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/168

school, and had dates on the veranda on summer evenings, and did all the things small-town girls do. But inside I was seething. All the time. Wanting to get away from there, and live. I don't know how I knew enough to want to, but I did. Instinctively, I suppose, and then from reading. I read all the time. Gulped books. Novels and poetry—my aunt used to think it was the biggest joke, my reading poetry when I didn't have to——

"Anyway. When I was about twenty—or maybe I was older than that, I've lived such eternities since, it's hard to remember—TI fell in love. Oh, terrifically! I can't tell you . . ."

Her eyes, distant and misty, told Jock better than any words could have. "She loved somebody the way I love her," he thought, and knew a pang that was sympathy and jealousy in one.

"His name was Paul Kirk," she continued, "and he looked—a good deal as you look, Jock Hamill. That's why you used to tear my heart a little whenever I saw you, at first, before—before I began to care about you for your own sake. No, don't, dear—don't interrupt me. Wait till I've said all I have to say.

"He had graduated from Boston Tech a couple of years before, an engineer, and he came to this town where I was living just for a few months, to do some experimental work at one of the factories. He boarded right next door. We were wild about one another from the very start. Kisses, and little notes, and all those foolish precious things. . . . My aunt didn't like it very well. She kept warning me against 'city fellows', and so did everybody else. They resent anyone from outside in towns like that. Bigoted . . .

"We planned to be married just as soon as Paul's work there was finished and he had settled in some per-