Why I can tell a woman with a past every time," he concluded confidently.
Katie sat there smiling at him.

The smile puzzled him.
"Now look here, Katie, surely you--a girl of the world--the good sort--aren't going to be so melodramatic as to dig up a 'past' for me, are you ?" "No," said Katie, "I don't want to be melodramatic.

I'll try to dig up no pasts." His talk ran on, and her thoughts.

It seemed so cruel a thing that Ann's past--whatever it might be, and surely nothing short of a "past" could make a girl want to kill herself--should rise up and damn her now.

To him she was a dear lovely girl--the sort of a girl a man would want to marry.
Very well then, intrinsically, she _was_ that.