Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/62

mere words had set her cheeks on fire, the careless, half-amused scorn of his tone, the matter-of-course for which he had taken it. She had rushed into one of her impetuous, heedless speeches:

"I would rather have a girl who has the realness in her to do something honestly wrong! One can't call that 'wrong'—no, too good a word. It's only futile, common. Oh, better the poor girls whose weakness has something real in it, some—courage, foolishness . . . But that sort!"

The ring of her voice sounded in her ears when she recalled the scene. It had stamped itself oddly on her memory, was always coming back to her, haunting her. . . .

The clear, tender pink still lingered on her cheek; for, once more, the public ball forgotten, she had gone over that little episode in the corridor last night—in the deserted, solitary corridor. Why did it thrill her so? She did not love the man who had thus surprised her—love him! Why, her acquaintance with him was of the slightest; and his feeling for her? She could not conceivably delude herself about that; it was very much the same, she divined, as hers for him . . . Then why was it? He was the first who had ever kissed her—could that be it?

At the time she had felt angry, but more hurt than angry; hurt at his audacity; it seemed as if he must have thought her a girl who very lightly "took a fancy" for a man, a girl who was easily attracted. . . . Some analogy was worrying her, something like it that had happened before, something she had read perhaps. . . . What could it be? Why could she not remember?

Great heaven! the girl at the public ball, the girl who had let a man kiss her for sport! "That sort!" . . .

Oh, no, no, there was no likeness, none, no analogy, no possible comparison. She, with her pride, and refinement, and high-flownromantic