His amazement was scarcely complimentary. Jerry giggled, and Sarah tittered. Joy tossed her head, and held her coat out to him. He enveloped her in it with an almost indecent haste, and they left for the gym, she feeling Jack Barnett’s glance still hot upon her.
On the way over, Tom sputtered a little; but when she descended upon him, in the gym, all objections vanished in unwilling admiration. She was so distractingly lovely that he could no longer cavil at such means to such an end.
For the first time in her life, Joy realized that she was beautiful; and as had been the case with womankind from time immemorial, that knowledge gave her power. She not only knew that she was beautiful; she knew that she was by far the most beautiful girl there. She knew this by sidelong glances the other girls cast at her, by the things she saw being murmured behind ostrich-feather fans; by the critically indignant way in which the matrons were regarding her. Up to this time she had never been able to elicit more than a friendly beam. She smiled beguilingly at the men she had met before, and they clustered about her; and always new ones who wanted to meet her, were being brought up. Prom began in a blaze of glory; she was achieving the envied distinction of being able to dance hardly a step without someone cutting in; and almost always she was surrounded by a group disputing as to who had cut in first. Boys who had scarcely noticed her before now besieged her with attentions, informing her with undergraduate modesty that they were “giving her a rush.” One of them asked her to the next house-party; several asked her to ball games; and many wanted to know where she lived and if she ever ran down to New York or Boston, and if so, when would she have a whirl with them?
She accepted everything indiscriminately. This at last was Life. She was a real belle—the kind one reads about in novels; the only kind that was ever interesting as a heroine. And through it all, her blood was thumping in her veins in queer little jerks and starts—waiting for the hero. He had been standing against the wall with the other stags—looking at her continually—and as yet he had danced with no one. She felt as if she had to talk with him, to hear his voice and see his smiling, tender eyes bent on her, before she was really awake. All this excitement was making her feel as if she were moving in a dream—except that her feet hurt her in a most undream-like fashion.
And now a disturbing thing happened. A man who had danced with her a great deal, she remembered, both that afternoon and the evening before, cut in on her. His name was Jim Dalton; he was a good looking boy of medium height, with blond, wavy hair plastered back in an attempt to make it look straight, and clear blue eyes that had a disconcerting habit of looking frankly into one’s own. Joy had rather liked him until she had learned that he was that unpardonable thing, a man who was “no one around college.” He was a nonentity—at least, he did not shine in any branch of college activities. Joy was too new to college ways to realize that there was nothing deplorable in this; that in so large a college there had to be the back-bone, the unknown quantities who made up “the college type”; she only knew that even Tom, because of his bustling, busy ways, was an important and committee’d man; and she was being rushed by the big man of college; and the Jim Daltons didn’t matter.
So when he cut in on her, she merely smiled mechanically, and as mechanically allowed her weary feet to be guided into a little corner away from the thickest press of the stags.
“What have they done to you?” he demanded, looking at her make-up and through it until she would have blushed if she could have.
“What do you mean?” she said coldly.
“I mean that I can’t dance with you and put my arm around you without touching your bare skin. I mean that you are painted and rouged until you look like a typical model showing off some new undress creation. There isn’t a single natural thing left about you.”
“Why! how dare you——” came stuttering from her red lips.