Free The Second Shot by Anthony Berkeley

inexperience that she was sobbing bitterly.
    I paused in some confusion, for feminine tears I have always endeavoured to avoid; they are embarrassing, emotionally disturbing, and by no means always necessary. Armorel’s tears were, in addition, astonishing. If I had not actually seen it, I could hardly have imagined Armorel weeping.
    In the ordinary course I should have slipped unobtrusively away, pretending that I had noticed nothing, and perhaps whistling a gay little tune to aid the deception. At present, however, this was impossible; the girl was lying not merely at my feet but right across my path. I could not but be cognizant of her presence.
    I determined to put as good a face on it as possible. ‘Ah, Armorel, here you are,’ I said, as cheerfully as I could. ‘So you’ve picked the bluebells, I see. I’ll tell Ethel. She’ll be delighted.’
    Armorel had sat up with a violent start, keeping her face still turned from me. I made as if to pass on my way.
    Then compunction overcame me. In vain I reminded myself that feminine tears were rarely as serious as they appeared. I felt that I must at least offer some consolation. ‘Is anything the matter, Armorel?’ I asked, in considerable embarrassment.
    She shook her averted head. ‘No, thanks. Just making a fool of myself, that’s all.’
    ‘There’s nothing I can do?’ I hesitated, feeling absurdly that there were probably a great number of things I could do, but not able to recognize exactly what.
    ‘No.’ Suddenly she turned her tear-stained face towards me and spoke with an intensity that I can only describe as ferocious. ‘Yes, there is though. Sit down and tell me how much you hate Eric. You do hate him, don’t you? I wonder if you hate him as much as I do.’
    ‘Armorel!’ I had to protest, but I sat down nevertheless.
    Armorel gave me a rather watery smile. ‘You’re a good sort really, Pinkie,’ she went on in more normal tones, brushing the lingering tears from her eyes, ‘under all that prim stiff-and-starchiness. Most men when they see a girl howling think it a fine excuse to get their hands on her, you know.’
    ‘I trust,’ I said, perhaps a little stiffly, ‘that I should never take advantage of a woman’s distress to proceed to such unwarrantable liberties. Not indeed that I have the faintest wish to “get my hands”, as you term it, on any girl.’ But I could not help feeling that it might perhaps be not at all unattractive to play the rôle of manual comforter in some cases which I need not specify.
    Fortunately Armorel did not perceive this unworthy reflection. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘I really don’t believe you have. And that’s probably why I want to let myself go at this moment and simply yowl on your shoulder. Could you bear it?’
    It was a strange proposal for me to hear, and a bare twenty-four hours ago I should have condemned it out of hand as the suggestion of a forward minx. And yet I could perceive now that it was nothing of the sort. Had my earnest reflections of the small hours given me something of a deeper insight into the opposite sex? I hope I have none of that foolish pride which forbids a man to admit that he has been in the wrong, and I confess freely that some at any rate of my former opinions regarding women had been quite mistaken. Armorel herself, for instance, was taking on quite a different aspect. Instead of the hard, man-aping, frivolous-minded young woman I had fancied her, I realized suddenly now that these affectations were just the manifestations of an immature mind, realizing and ashamed (however unnecessarily) of its youth, and trying desperately to appear mature. I had mistaken the outward signs for the inward lack of grace. The lipstick, the paint, and the cigarettes were non-essentials, mere excrescences on a simple and quite possibly a not unpleasant nature. Her request of a moment ago was not a piece of calculated coquetry; it was just an appeal for sympathy and comfort.
    These