“But ever since I saw you at my uncle’s last April, I’ve been wishing I might see you again.
I always look for your name in the papers.”
He looked at her seekingly and questioningly and in spite of herself, Sondra was captivated by this naive confession.
Plainly he could not afford to go where or do what she did, but still he would trouble to follow her name and movements in print.
She could not resist the desire to make something more of this.
“Oh, do you?” she added.
“Isn’t that nice?
But what do you read about me?”
“That you were at Twelfth and Greenwood Lakes and up at Sharon for the swimming contests. I saw where you went up to Paul Smith’s, too.
The papers here seemed to think you were interested in some one from Schroon Lake and that you might be going to marry him.”
“Oh, did they?
How silly.
The papers here always say such silly things.”
Her tone implied that he might be intruding.
He looked embarrassed. This softened her and after a moment she took up the conversation in the former vein.
“Do you like to ride?” she asked sweetly and placatively.
“I never have.
You know I never had much chance at that, but I always thought I could if I tried.”
“Of course, it’s not hard.
If you took a lesson or two you could, and,” she added in a somewhat lower tone, “we might go for a canter sometime.
There are lots of horses in our stable that you would like, I’m sure.”
Clyde’s hair-roots tingled anticipatorily.
He was actually being invited by Sondra to ride with her sometime and he could use one of her horses in the bargain.
“Oh, I would love that,” he said.
“That would be wonderful.”
The crowd was getting up from the table.
Scarcely any one was interested in the dinner, because a chamber orchestra of four having arrived, the strains of a preliminary fox trot were already issuing from the adjacent living room — a long, wide affair from which all obstructing furniture with the exception of wall chairs had been removed.
“You had better see about your program and your dance before all the others are gone,” cautioned Sondra.
“Yes, I will right away,” said Clyde, “but is two all I get with you?”
“Well, make it three, five and eight then, in the first half.”
She waved him gayly away and he hurried for a dance card.
The dances were all of the eager fox-trotting type of the period with interpolations and variations according to the moods and temperaments of the individual dancers.
Having danced so much with Roberta during the preceding month, Clyde was in excellent form and keyed to the breaking point by the thought that at last he was in social and even affectional contact with a girl as wonderful as Sondra.
And although wishing to seem courteous and interested in others with whom he was dancing, he was almost dizzied by passing contemplations of Sondra.
She swayed so droopily and dreamily in the embrace of Grant Cranston, the while without seeming to, looking in his direction when he was near, permitting him to sense how graceful and romantic and poetic was her attitude toward all things — what a flower of life she really was.
And Nina Temple, with whom he was now dancing for his benefit, just then observed:
“She is graceful, isn’t she?”
“Who?” asked Clyde, pretending an innocence he could not physically verify, for his cheek and forehead flushed.
“I don’t know who you mean.”
“Don’t you?
Then what are you blushing for?”
He had realized that he was blushing. And that his attempted escape was ridiculous.
He turned, but just then the music stopped and the dancers drifted away to their chairs.
Sondra moved off with Grant Cranston and Clyde led Nina toward a cushioned seat in a window in the library.
And in connection with Bertine with whom he next danced, he found himself slightly flustered by the cool, cynical aloofness with which she accepted and entertained his attention.
Her chief interest in Clyde was the fact that Sondra appeared to find him interesting.
“You do dance well, don’t you?
I suppose you must have done a lot of dancing before you came here — in Chicago, wasn’t it, or where?”
She talked slowly and indifferently.
“I was in Chicago before I came here, but I didn’t do so very much dancing. I had to work.”