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 and physical animation which quite matched and companioned her own.
Hence it was decidedly a troublesome thought with Sondra how she was to proceed with Clyde without attracting too much attention and unfavorable comment to herself — a thought which kept her sly little brain going at nights after she had retired. However, those who had met him at the Trumbulls’ were so much impressed by her interest in him that evening and the fact that he had proved so pleasing and affable, they in turn, the girls particularly, were satisfied that he was eligible enough.
And in consequence, two weeks later, Clyde, searching for inexpensive Christmas presents in Stark’s for his mother, father, sisters, brother and Roberta, and encountering Jill Trumbull doing a little belated shopping herself, was invited by her to attend a pre-Christmas dance that was to be given the next night by Vanda Steele at her home in Gloversville. Jill herself was going with Frank Harriet and she was not sure but that Sondra Finchley would be there. Another engagement of some kind appeared to be in the way, but still she was intending to come if she could. But her sister Gertrude would be glad to have him escort her — a very polite way of arranging for Gertrude. Besides, as she knew, if Sondra heard that Clyde was to be there, this might induce her to desert her other engagement.
“Tracy will be glad to stop for you in time,” she went on, “or —” she hesitated —“perhaps you’d like to come over for dinner with us before we go. It’ll be just the family, but we’d be delighted to have you. The dancing doesn’t begin till eleven.”
The dance was for Friday night, and on that night Clyde had arranged to be with Roberta because on the following day she was leaving for a three-day-over-Christmas holiday visit to her parents
