s he reappeared her head
straightened itself on her slim neck and she sped her little shafts of
irony, or flew her little kites of erudition, while hot and cold waves
swept over her, and the things she really wanted to say choked in her
throat and burned the palms of her hands.

Often she told herself that any silly girl who had waltzed through a
season would know better than she how to attract a man and hold him; but
when she said "a man" she did not really mean George Darrow.

Then one day, at a dinner, she saw him sitting next to one of the silly
girls in question: the heroine of the elopement which had shaken West
Fifty-fifth Street to its base. The young lady had come back from her
adventure no less silly than when she went; and across the table the
partner of her flight, a fat young man with eye-glasses, sat stolidly
eating terrapin and talking about polo and investments.

The young woman was undoubtedly as silly as ever; yet after watching
her for a few minutes Miss Summers perceived that she had somehow grown
luminous, perilous, obscurely menacing to nice girls and the young men
they intended eventually to accept. Suddenly, at the sight, a rage of
possessorship awoke in her. She must save Darrow, assert her right
to him at any price. Pride and reticence went down in a hurricane
of jealousy. She heard him laugh, and there was something new in his
laugh...She watched him talking, talking...He sat slightly sideways, a
faint smile beneath his lids, lowering his voice as he lowered it when
he talked to her. She caught the same inflections, but his eyes were
different. It would have offended her once if he had looked at her like
that. Now her one thought was that none but she had a right to be so
looked at. And that girl of all others! What illusions could he have
about a girl who, hardly a year ago, had made a fool of herself over
the fat young man stolidly eating terrapin across the table? If that
was where romance and passion ended, it was better to take to district
visiting or algebra!

All night she lay awake and wondered: "What was she saying to him? How
shall I learn to say such things?" and she decided that her heart would
tell her--that the next time they were alone together the irresistible
word would spring to her lips. He came the next day, and they were
alone, and all she found was: "I didn't know that you and Kitty Mayne
were such friends."

He answered with indifference that he didn't know it eithe