The Greatest Works of Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser
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.” He was thinking how such girls as she had everything, as contrasted with girls like Roberta, who had nothing. And yet, as he now felt in this instance, he liked Roberta better. She was sweeter and warmer and kinder — not so cold.
When the music started again with the sonorous melancholy of a single saxophone interjected at times, Sondra came over to him and placed her right hand in his left and allowed him to put his arm about her waist, an easy, genial and unembarrassed approach which, in the midst of Clyde’s dream of her, was thrilling.
And then in her coquettish and artful way she smiled up in his eyes, a bland, deceptive and yet seemingly promising smile, which caused his heart to beat faster and his throat to tighten. Some delicate perfume that she was using thrilled in his nostrils as might have the fragrance of spring.
“Having a good time?”
“Yes — looking at you.”
“When there are so many other nice girls to look at?”
“Oh, there are no other girls as nice as you.”
“And I dance better than any other girl, and I’m much the best- looking of any other girl here. Now — I’ve said it all for you. Now what are you going to say?”
She looked up at him teasingly, and Clyde realizing that he had a very different type to Roberta to deal with, was puzzled and flushed.
“I see,” he said, seriously. “Every fellow tells you that, so you don’t want me to.”
“Oh, no, not every fellow.” Sondra was at once intrigued and checkmated by the simplicity of his retort. “There are lots of people who don’t think I’m very pretty.”
“Oh, don’t they, though?” he returned quite gayly, for at once he saw that she was not making fun of him. And yet he was almost afraid to venture another compliment. Instead he cast about for something else to say, and going back to the conversation at the table concerning riding and tennis, he now asked: “You like everything out-of-doors and athletic, don’t you?”
“Oh, do I?” was her quick and enthusiastic response. “There isn’t anything I like as much, really. I’m just crazy about riding, tennis, swimming, motor-boating, aqua-planing. You swim, don’t you?”
“Oh, sure,” said Clyde, grandly.
“Do you play tennis?”
“Well, I’ve just taken it up,” he said, fearing to admit that he did not play at all.
“Oh, I just love tennis. We might play sometime together.” Clyde’s spirits were completely restored by this. And tripping as lightly as dawn to the mournful strains of a popular love song, she went right on. “Bella Griffiths and Stuart and Grant and I play fine doubles. We won nearly all the finals at Greenwood and Twelfth Lake last summer. And when it comes to aqua-planing and high diving you just ought to see me. We have the swiftest motor- boat up at Twelfth Lake now — Stuart has. It can do sixty miles an hour.”
At once Clyde realized that he had hit upon the one subject that not only fascinated, but even excited her. For not only did it involve outdoor exercise, in which obviously she reveled, but also the power to triumph and so achieve laurels in such phases of sport as most interested those with whom she was socially connected. And lastly, although this was something which he did not so clearly realize until later, she was fairly dizzied by the opportunity all this provided for frequent changes of costume and hence social show, which was the one thing above all others that did interest her. How she looked in a bathing suit — a riding or tennis or dancing or automobile costume!
They danced on together, thrilled for the moment at least, by this mutual recognition of the identity and reality of this interest each felt for the other — a certain momentary warmth or enthusiasm which took the form of genial and seeking glances into each other’s eyes, hints on the part of Sondra that, assuming that Clyde could fit himself athletically, financially and in other ways for such a world as this, it might be possible that he would be invited here and there by her; broad and for the moment self-deluding notions on his part that such could and would be the case, while in reality just below the surface of his outward or seeming conviction and assurance ran a deeper current of self-distrust which showed as a decidedly eager and yet slightly mournful light in his eye, a certain vigor and assurance in his voice, which was nevertheless touched, had she been able to define it, with something that was not assurance by any means.
“Oh, the dance is done,” he said sadly.
“Let’s try to make them encore,” she said, applauding. The orchestra struck up a lively tune and they glided off together once more, dipping and swaying here and there — harmoniously abandoning themselves to the rhythm of the music — like two small chips being tossed about on a rough but friendly sea.
“Oh, I’m so glad to be with you again — to be dancing with you. It’s so wonderful . . . Sondra.”
“But you mustn’t call me that, you know. You don’t know me well enough.”
“I mean Miss Finchley. But you’re not going to be mad at me again, are you?”
His face was very pale and sad again.
She noticed it.
“No. Was I mad at you? I wasn’t really. I like you some . . . when you’re not sentimental.”
The music stopped. The light tripping feet became walking ones.
“I’d like to see if it’s still snowing outside, wouldn’t you?” It was Sondra asking.
“Oh, yes. Let’s go.”
Through the moving couples they hurried out a side-door to a world that was covered thick with soft, cottony, silent snow. The air was filled with it silently eddying down.
Chapter 27
The ensuing December days brought to Clyde some pleasing and yet complicating and disturbing developments. For Sondra Finchley, having found him so agreeable an admirer of hers, was from the first inclined neither to forget nor neglect him. But, occupying the rather prominent social position which she did, she was at first rather dubious as to how to proceed. For Clyde was too poor and decidedly too much ignored by the Griffiths themselves, even, for her to risk any marked manifestation of interest in him.
And now, in addition to the primary motivating reason for all this — her desire to irritate Gilbert by being friends with his cousin — there was another. She liked him. His charm and his reverence for her and her station flattered and intrigued her. For hers was a temperament which required adulation in about the measure which Clyde provided it — sincere and romantic adulation. And at the very same time he represented physical as well as mental attributes which were agreeable to her — amorousness without the courage at the time, anyhow, to annoy her too much; reverence which yet included her as a very human being; a mental