Royal laughed and the others teased me. One of the girls said I'd be doing all those things before the year ended. When I declared I would not Royal reminded me that I had said the same about cards and dancing. His words silenced me. I felt engulfed in shame and deeply hurt. How could Royal be amused at my discomfiture if he loved me! Did he love me? Did I want him to? Could I promise to honor and love him all my life? But perhaps he was teasing me—ah, that was it! I breathed more easily again. Royal was teasing me, sure of my refusal to indulge in any intoxicant. The others ate and made merry while I toyed idly with the glass of ginger ale the waiter brought me against my wish. I mused and dreamed—would Royal like my people? Somehow, he seemed an incongruity among the dear ones at the gray farmhouse in Lancaster County. What would he say when we ate in the kitchen and daddy came to the table in his shirt sleeves? Love can bridge greater chasms than that, I thought. When we are married——
"Royal Lee, are you ever going to marry?" The question broke into my revery.
I looked at Royal. There was no rise of color in his handsome face. He returned my look dispassionately then turned to his teasing, inquisitive friend.
"I'm a bachelor forever," he declared. "But that does not keep me from loving. Women I care for have too much good sense to think that marriage always follows love. Ye Gods, I think love goes when marriage comes, so you'll have no chance to see my love interred."
I clenched my hands under the table. I felt my lips go white. How could he hurt me so? Of course our love was not a thing to be paraded in a public place but if he really cared for me as I thought he did he could have answered differently. An evasive answer would have served. An hour ago he had whispered tender words to me and now he frankly informed all present that he was a bachelor forever. I could not grasp the full significance of his words at once. I was dazed by the shock of them. I wanted to get away and be alone, to cry, to think, to determine what he had meant by his demonstrations of love if he did not hope to win me for his wife.
But later, when I went to bed in the pretty blue and white room next Virginia's, I did not cry. I lay wide awake thinking over and over, "How could he do it? Why is he heartless? Was he only playing?"
When morning came I had partially decided that I had been a ready, silly fool; that Royal Lee had merely whiled the hours away more pleasantly because of my love. I felt tempted to denounce him but I thought that would afford him additional amusement and make me not a whit less miserable. I was eager to get away from him. I desired but one little moment alone with him to satisfy myself that I did not judge him unjustly. Fortunately he came to the sitting-room as I sat there staring at the page of a magazine.
"Alone?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Phœbe"—he drew nearer and I rose and stood away from him. "My Bluebird! You look unhappy. Are you still shocked at the smoking and drinking you saw last night? It's all in the game, you know. Why not be happy along with the rest of us, why be a prude?"