The difficulties of meeting some one at seven, when she would be through by half past five, occurred to her, and she wondered where girls met men and how she could pretend this was not as new and exciting a situation as it was.
"Great. You get through about five, don't you? I'll call here and we'll find some way to kill the time between."
"Fine." Jean made the monosyllable as comradely as she could, and flattered herself that she had carried it off very well.
Herrick turned to the books and in a few moments was hard at work.
Jean's confusion had delighted him, and destroyed the slight annoyance he had felt at being carried away by such a foolish impulse as to ask her at all. It would be delicious to watch the reactions of this shy woman in the sophisticated world of The Bunch. He decided to say nothing about her beforehand, and enjoy to the full their surprise when he appeared,—a little late, he would see to that—with Jean in tow.
"She'll hit them like a blast of north wind. I shouldn't wonder if Kitten doesn't actually shiver."
The prospect of watching The Kitten shiver pleased Herrick immensely.
CHAPTER FOUR
Exactly at half past five Herrick came. The thick hair had been freshly cut, and he wore a suit that Jean had not seen before. He looked young and very happy and full of joy in life. As they came down the library steps and joined the after-matinée crowds, it seemed to Jean that Herrick stood out from other men, bigger, cleaner, stronger. There was something in him, burning below the flesh, that whitened and sharpened him, so that the lines which were sometimes dull and heavy when he bent intently over the books across the table, were now finely cut. He walked beside her as if he were walking lightly on springy ground, and the memory came back to Jean how, the first time she had seen him, she had thought of a gull, a strong, white gull, poised in flight. It was impossible to believe that it was only two weeks ago, and that she had seen him, in all, not more than seven or eight times.
Herrick made no effort at conversation as they threaded their way through the crowds. He was not at all sure of his ground with Jean, for his first interest had deepened in the two weeks to an intensity that surprised him. To be interested in a woman who was not obviously pretty, whose life lay well within the circle that The Bunch called the Outland, who made no effort to attract him, who never, by the slightest feminine trick, tried to rouse his interest, a woman who had been through college and was earning her own living and yet had something cloistered about her. She piqued Herrick's curiosity. One by one he had seen his small efforts drop like spent arrows against the wall of her sincere but unemotional interest.