Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/60

And the teacher? For him, she had imagined herself fastidious, critical of shades of manner, almost impossible to please; and now, this morning! . . . It had been a man whom she hardly knew, but with whom she felt comicious of a strange intimacy. He, too, repulsed and attracted her at once; said things to her that in any one else she would have passionately resented, spoke to her with an almost obtrusive sans-gêne, did not even especially amuse her, and yet—his attraction was invincible. Directly she came into a ball-room where he was, she perceived him, freshly disapproved of him, smiled at him, disarranged her card to include his dances, and, the dance over, came to sit out, in a corridor such as that last night, all voluptuousness and allurement. . . . She raged at herself perpetually, and would talk, none the less, her wittiest and brightest, and glance gaily into the eyes that looked back at her with a somewhat pasé cynicism.

Last night! Over and over again the scene recalled itself, and thrilled her with that curious tremor. . . . She longed for a clearer view of it, a cool, unswayed opinion . . . yet to tell! It would be schoolgirlish, typical almost of silly loquacious womanhood; that was her first thought, then came another: the woman of the world—the half-cynical, half-tender type that attracted her so strongly, that she had met with in one woman, and loved so dearly. Would she have told? Yes, she could fancy her, in her bright allusive way, with her wide roguish gaze, and enchanting suggestion of a brogue. . . . So, she would tell, and then, she laughed to think how much she was making of it; it was such a little thing after all, wasn't it? . . . But she wavered again. It would sound so crude, such a bald, almost vulgar, statement. For, when all was said and done, what had happened? . . . In the moment that she felt her cheek tinge itself again with that vivid pink, another memory came to her,vaguely