"
She had been gazing into the fire, and as she turned slowly in answer to
his words, it seemed to him that the blue of a summer sky shone on him
from beneath the tremulous shadow of her eyelashes.
"The trouble," she replied, with an appealing glance, "is that I don't
know how to be common. There isn't any hope of a girl's being popular if
she doesn't know how to be common. I would be if I could," she confessed
plaintively, "but I haven't the faintest idea how to begin."
"I hope you'll never learn," he insisted. In awakening his sympathy she
had awakened also a deep-rooted protective instinct. He felt that he
longed to guard and defend her, as a brother of course, and if this
newer and tenderer sentiment was the result of feminine calculation, he
was too chivalrous or too inexperienced to perceive it. What he
perceived was simply that this lovely girl, whom he had known from
infancy, had opened her heart and taken him into her confidence. To
admit that she was not a success in her small social world, proved her,
he felt, to be both frank and courageous.
Pages:
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132