“I see.” Her lips were quivering. “You won’t be—you’ll be with Adele.”
“I think that—more or less—I will. She’ll—want to see you, of course.”
Another silence while he twisted his big fingers and she helplessly imitated the gesture.
“You were just sorry for me,” she said. “You like Adele—much better.”
“Adele and I understand each other. She’s been more or less my ideal since we were children together.”
“And I’m not your kind of girl?” Josephine’s voice trembled with a sort of fright. “I suppose because I’ve kissed a lot of boys and got a reputation for speed and raised the deuce.”
“It isn’t that.”
“Yes, it is,” she declared passionately. “I’m just paying for things.” She stood up. “You’d better take me back inside so I can dance with the kind of boys that like me.”
She walked quickly down the path, tears of misery streaming from her eyes. He overtook her by the steps, but she only shook her head and said, “Excuse me for being so fresh. I’ll grow up—I got what was coming to me—it’s all right.”
A little later when she looked around the floor for him he had gone—and Josephine realized with a shock that for the first time in her life, she had tried for a man and failed. But, save in the very young, only love begets love, and from the moment Josephine had perceived that his interest in her was merely kindness she realized the wound was not in her heart but in her pride. She would forget him quickly, but she would never forget what she had learned from him. There were two kinds of men, those you played with and those you might marry. And as this passed through her mind, her restless eyes wandered casually, over the group of stags, resting very lightly on Mr. Gordon Tinsley, the current catch of Chicago, reputedly the richest young man in the Middle West. He had never paid any attention to young Josephine until tonight. Ten minutes ago he had asked her to go driving with him tomorrow.
But he did not attract her—and she decided to refuse. One mustn’t run through people, and, for the sake of a romantic half-hour, trade a possibility that might develop—quite seriously—later, at the proper time. She did not know that this was the first mature thought that she had ever had in her life, but it was.
The orchestra were packing their instruments and the Princeton man was still at her ear, still imploring her to walk out with him into the night. Josephine knew without cogitation which sort of man he was—and the moon was bright even on the windows. So with a certain sense of relaxation she took his arm and they strolled out to the pleasant bower she had so lately quitted, and their faces turned towards each other, like little moons under the great white ones which hovered high over the Blue Ridge; his arm dropped softly about her yielding shoulder.
“Well?” he whispered.
“Well.”
