I came to Easthampton to pretend to be.

All the time you've known me I've been pretending,--pretending to pretend.

I ceased to be a kid before the spring was over,--when I came face to face with something I had driven Martin to do and it broke me.

I've been bluffing since then,--bluffing myself that I didn't care and that it wasn't my fault.

I might have kept it up a bit longer,--even to the end of the summer, but Gilbert said something this morning that took the lynch pin out of the sham and brought it all about my ears." And there was another short silence,--if it could be called silence with the whirring of the engine and the boy driving with the throttle out.
"You care for him, then ?" he asked finally, looking at her.
She nodded and the tears came.
It was a great shock to him, somehow; he couldn't quite say why.