§ 6
That night Jeannette experienced all the exquisite joy and fierce agony of young love. It was an exhausting ordeal; she lived over and over the thrilling hours of the day that had terminated in that glorious, intoxicating second when the boy’s thin lips were against her own, and she had felt their warm, tingling pressure. The recollection brought to her wave upon wave of hot flushes that began somewhere deep down inside her being and flooded her with ecstasy. She strove against it, yet had no wish to control her thoughts. Shame,—some curious sense of wrong,—distressed her. It was not right;—it was all wrong! Instinct grappled with desire. She wept deliciously, convulsively, burying her head in her pillow and pressing its smothering softness against her mouth to stifle her sobbing breath that neither her mother nor Alice might hear it. Past midnight she rose and went noiselessly to the bathroom where she washed her face, carefully brushed and re-braided her hair. Her head ached and her swollen eyes were hot and painful. But she felt calmer. She studied her face for a long moment in the battered mirror that hung above the wash-stand, and as she looked a great quivering breath was wrung from her.
“Roy ... I can’t ... it can never be ... never, never be,” she whispered despairingly to her image.
For the moment she felt triumphant. She had conquered something, she did not know what. She dimmed the gaslight and found her way back to bed. Sleep came mercifully, and she did not wake until her mother kissed her the next morning.
§ 7
It was Sunday, the day he had promised to come to dinner. Dinner, with the Sturgises on Sunday, was always the noontime meal. Cold meat or a levy on Kratzmer’s delicatessen counters, with weak hot tea, constituted Sunday supper. Dinner, however, invariably involved roast chicken and ice cream which was secured at the last moment from O’Day’s Candy Parlor, and carried home by one of the girls, packed in a thin pasteboard box. There was seldom ice in the leaky ice-box, and Sunday dinner was therefore usually a hurried affair, as mother and the girls were always acutely conscious during every minute of its duration of the melting cream in the kitchen.
For this Mrs. Sturgis was responsible. Her frugality would not allow her leisurely to enjoy her meal at the sacrifice of the ice cream. The fear of its becoming soft and mushy pressed relentlessly upon her consciousness.
“Now, dearie,—don’t talk! Eat your dinner. It’s much more digestible if it’s eaten while it’s hot,” she would urge her daughters almost with every mouthful.
No one ever spoke of the ice cream itself. The reason for such close application to the business of eating was never voiced. It was part of the ritual of Sunday dinner that it should not be mentioned. Not until Alice had piled and crowded the aluminum tray with the soiled dishes, carried these away, and returned with the mound of cream sagging upon its platter, could Mrs. Sturgis and her daughters allow themselves to relax. No matter how well the rest of the dinner might be cooked, it must be gulped down and its enjoyment wasted for the sake of a quarter’s worth of frozen cream.
It was upon these circumstances that Jeannette’s rebellious thoughts centered on the morning of Roy Beardsley’s visit. She was worn out after her troubled night, and the prospect of seeing him so soon after the tremendous occurrences of the previous afternoon and her stormy reflections upon them made her nervous, apprehensive. She wanted time to think things out, to consider matters.... Anyhow—what would her mother and sister think of him? What would he think of them?