That had been in the Christmas holidays of 1910. Very well he remembered
all that had happened then, for he and Betty had just become engaged.
At nineteen Betty Tosswill had belonged to the ideal type of
old-fashioned English girlhood--high-spirited, cheerful, artless yet
intelligent, with a strong sense of humour. She had worn a pink evening
frock during those long-ago Christmas holidays, and had looked, at any
rate in her young lover's eyes, beautiful.
They had been ardently, passionately in love, he a masterful, exacting
lover, and though seeming older than his age, without any of the
magnanimity which even the passage of only a very few years brings to
most intelligent men. Poor little Betty of long ago--what a child she
had been at nineteen!--but a child capable of deep and varied emotions.
At the time of their parting he had been absorbed in his own selfish
sensations of anger, revolt, and the sharp sense of loss, savagely glad
that she was unhappy too. But after he had gone, after he had plunged
into the new, to him exciting and curious, life of the great vessel
taking him to Australia, he had forced himself to put Betty out of his
mind, and, after a few days, he had started a violent flirtation with the
most attractive woman on board the liner.
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