gan to
feel something like hatred for Conny whom he had formerly liked.

This feeling was deepened by the fact that Conny seemed to be specially
bent on defeating Ramon's ambition to be alone with the girl. If no one
else joined them at the end of a dance, Conny was almost sure to do so,
and to occupy the intermission with one of his ever-ready monologues,
while Ramon sat silent and angry, wondering what Julia saw to admire in
this windy fool, and occasionally daring to wonder whether she really saw
anything in him after all.

But a sufficiently devoted lover is seldom wholly without a reward. There
came an evening when Ramon found himself alone with her. And he was aware
with a thrill that she had evaded not only Conny, but two other men. Her
smile was friendly and encouraging, too, and yet he could not find
anything to say which in the least expressed his feelings.

"Are you going to stay in this country long?" he began. The question
sounded supremely casual, but it meant a great deal to him. He was haunted
by a fear that she would depart suddenly, and he would never see her
again. She smiled and looked away for a moment before replying, as though
perhaps this was not exactly what she had expected him to say.

"I don't know. Gordon wants mother and me to go back East this fall, but I
don't want to go and mother doesn't want to leave Gordon alone.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} We
haven't decided. Maybe I won't go till next year."

"I suppose you'll go to college won't you?"

"No; I wanted to go to Vassar and then study art, but mother says college
spoils a girl for society. She thinks the way the Vassar girls walk is
perfectly dreadful. I offered to go right on walking the same way, but she
said anyway college makes girls so frightfully broad-minded.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

Ramon laughed.

"What will you do then?"

"I'll come out."

"Out of what?"

"Make my di?1/2but, don't you know?"

"O, yes."

"In New York. I have an aunt there. She knows all the best people, mother
says."

"What happens after you come out?"

"You get married if anybody will have you. If not, you sort of fade away
and finally go into uplift work about your fourth season."

"But of course, you'll get married. I bet you'll marry a millionaire."

"I don't know. Mother wants me to marry a broker. She says the big
financial houses in New York are conducted by the very best people. But
Gordon thinks I ought to marry a professional man--a do