"Yes," the boy admitted, his face darkly flushed again. "This is awfully
hard, honey, but I'll tell you once for all and get it over with.... I
took her to dinner. We drove to Burnsville because she said she was sick
of Hamilton. When we were driving back she suddenly became very
queer--reckless, defiant.... And she asked me if I still wanted to marry
her, and I said I did. I asked her right then to say when, and she said
she'd marry me June first, but she added--" and the boy, to Dundee's
watching eyes, seemed to be genuinely puzzled again by what must have
sounded so odd at the time--"that she'd marry me June first _if she
lived to see the day_."
"Oh!" Penny gasped, then, controlling her horror, she asked with what
sounded like real curiosity, "Then what--happened, Ralph? Why do you
propose to _her_ on Thursday and to _me_ on--on Sunday?"
"A gorgeous actress sacrificed to the typewriter," Dundee told himself,
as he waited for Ralph Hammond's reluctant reply.
"Can't we forget it, honey?... You do love me a little, don't you? Can't
you take my word for it that--I'm cured now--forever?"
Penny's hands went up to cover her face, and Dundee had the grace to
feel very sorry indeed for her--sorry even if she intended to give her
promise to Ralph Hammond, as a sick feeling in his stomach prophesied
that she was about to do.
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