e on her guest. As
a matter of fact, they had none whatever.
She smiled once widely to herself, over a thought of the half-back. The
man here in the room with her now, chatting so pleasantly with her
mother, wouldn't ask for favors--would accept nothing that wasn't
offered as eagerly as it was sought.
It wasn't until he rose to go that she aroused herself and went with him
into the hall. There, after he'd got into his overcoat and hooked his
stick over his arm, he held out his hand to her in formal leave-taking.
Only it didn't turn out that way. For the effect of that warm lithe grip
flew its flag in both their faces.
"You're such a wonder!" he said.
She smiled. "So are y-you." It was the first time she had ever stammered
in her life.
When she came back into the sitting-room, she found Portia inclined to
be severe.
"Did you ask him to come again?" she wanted to know.
Rose smiled. "I never thought of it," she said.
"Perhaps it's just as well," said Portia. "Did you have anything at all
to say to him before we came home, or were you like that all the while?
How long ago did he come?"
"I don't know," said Rose behind a very real yawn. "I was asleep on the
couch when he came in. That's why I was dressed like this." And then she
said she was hungry.
There wasn't, on the whole, a happier person in the world at that
moment.
Because Rodney Aldrich, pounding along at five miles an hour, in a
direction left to chance, was not happy. Or, if he was, he didn't know
it. He couldn't yield instantly, and easily, to his intuitions, as Rose
had done. He felt that he must think--felt that he had never stood in
such dire need of cool level consideration as at this moment:
But the process was impossible. That fine instrument of precision, his
mind, that had, for many years, done without complaint the work he gave
it to do, had simply gone on a strike. Instead of ratiocinating
properly, it presented pictures. Mainly four: a girl, flaming with
indignation, holding a street-car conductor pinned by the wrists; a girl
in absurd bedroom slippers, her skirt twisted around her knees, her hair
a chaos, stretching herself awake like a big cat; a girl with wonderful,
blue, tear-brimming eyes, from whose glory he had had to turn away. Last
of all, the girl who had said with that adorable stammer, "So are
y-you," and smiled a smile that had summed up everything that was
desirable in the world.
It was late that night when h
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