Billy had remorsefully come to the conclusion that she could never love
any man well enough to marry him, when one day so small a thing as a
piece of paper fluttered into her vision, and showed her the fallacy of
that idea.
It was a half-sheet of note paper, and it blew from Marie's balcony to
the lawn below. Billy found it there later, and as she picked it up her
eyes fell on a single name in Marie's handwriting inscribed half a dozen
times as if the writer had musingly accompanied her thoughts with her
pen; and the name was, "Marie Henshaw."
For a moment Billy stared at the name perplexedly--then in a flash came
the remembrance of Marie's words; and Billy breathed: "Henshaw!--the
man--BERTRAM!"
Billy dropped the paper then and fled. In her own room, behind locked
doors, she sat down to think.
Bertram! It was he for whom Marie cared--HER Bertram! And then it came
to Billy with staggering force that he was not HER Bertram at all. He
never could be her Bertram now. He was--Marie's.
Billy was frightened then, so fierce was this strange new something that
rose within her--this overpowering something that seemed to blot out all
the world, and leave only--Bertram. She knew then, that it had always
been Bertram to whom she had turned, though she had been blind to the
cause of that turning. Always her plans had included him.
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