She tried to cover her face there in the dark, to hide the shattering of her idol; but his hands caught hers and held them away so that he could find her lips again. In all her sheltered life, Joy had never known what it was to be afraid. But now she felt a chill, bewildering fear. She was absolutely helpless. Something her father had once said, came back to her as she gasped there in the darkness: “A girl should never be where the situation does not protect her.” She was where the situation protected her. All around there were others—within good hearing distance.
“If you don’t let me go,” she panted, “I shall scream so that everyone can hear——”
His grasp relaxed for a moment and she pulled herself free and ran away from him through the darkness—down the way that they had come, past the glowing cigarette ends, and gay little murmurs of conversation, until she came to the door and light. There she did not stop to take breath, but fled on up the stairs.
“Oh, there you are, Joy!” Tom was at the door, and hailed her as she came into the gym. “Where have you been? Fixing your hair, I know. I told you it’d come down that new way. Come on—this is the supper dance. Say, what’s the matter? You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”
She laughed, and was appalled at the ease with which the laugh came to her lips. “What time is it, Tom?”
“Oh, only a little after midnight.”
Only a little after midnight—and she had to dance and smile until morning. She was exhausted. Her silver slippers were stabbing her feet in long jabs which went quivering all through her body. And the sweet singing in her heart had gone. Joy had had little experience with men, the youths in Foxhollow Corners preferring to try their hand at more willing material when amorously inclined. She had made of herself and all she did a temple, kept for the Unknown God who would surely come some day. And from almost the first moment, she had been sure that Jack Barnett was The One. She had fitted the mantle of her dreams upon him, and then he had turned and rent the mantle. She had not known men could be like that.
As she danced with different men and smiled and talked automatically in answer to their sallies, she found herself inspecting them with a new and fearful curiosity. Were all men like that? The thought was revolting, but could not be dismissed. Even in the days of chivalry, when a maiden in distress was the first to be protected—even then there was said to be but one Perfect Knight.
In one of the spaces, when Tom danced with her, he said, “Barnett’s getting stewed as fast as he can pour ’em down. That’s the worst of not having a girl to Prom—got to drown your sorrows some way.”
She followed his gaze to the door, where Barnett was leaning up against the wall and talking somewhat unsteadily to a group of stags. His eyes met hers; even at that distance they were bloodshot, terrible. His eyes that had been so tender—and now—now, as they looked at her with a fierce intensity, they made her think of a dog before whom red meat is dangled. Under his look she felt the dripping ice of horror’s perspiration.