“We’ve got to go somewhere to talk, David. I can’t stand—this.”
He let her lead him down three flights of the magnificent circular marble staircase, and because he was so silent she thought miserably that it might be hurting him that she was so much at home in this vast, splendid house.
“Miss Rice’s office!” she cried, after he had darted about in an unsuccessful effort to find a secluded nook not already occupied by truant couples.
When the door had closed upon them, she faced him, her breath catching on a little gasp of anticipation. But his arms stayed rigidly at his side.
“It was in this very room, David,” she began eagerly, “that I fought the battle with Mother and won. I made her keep her promise to me to invite you to my coming-out ball. She promised me two and a half years ago, promised so I would promise her not to write to you. But I wrote you every week, sometimes oftener, and I’m still writing every week, though I can’t mail the letters. Now I can! Now I can! Do you realize I’m of age, David? I’m eighteen and a half, and I’m ‘out.’ Isn’t that funny? I’m officially ‘out’ now, and I can do as I please.”
Her voice dragged a little at the end, for he was looking at her as if she were a stranger, or as if he were trying to make her feel like a stranger to him. With a moan, she lifted her arms and crept so close to him that she could lay her head against his breast. “Aren’t you—going to kiss me, David? I’ve waited so long, so long—”
She felt him stiffen, then his hands came up slowly and fastened upon hers. But it was only to remove her hands from his shoulders—
“You must forget me, Sally, or remember me only when you remember Sally Ford and Pitty Sing and Jan and Pop Bybee. We all belong together in your memory, and none of us belongs in Sally Barr’s life.” His voice was level, heavy, not the young, tender, musical voice that had made love to her during the carnival days.
She took a backward step, a little drunkenly, and the face she lifted bravely for whatever blow he was going to deal her was pinched and white, the eyes blue-black with pain. “Don’t you love me any more, David?”
“I’m a poor man and I’m not a fortune-hunter,” David answered grimly. “I—don’t know Sally Barr.”