For the first time, a disquieting twinge seized Alex, lest the same words should apply to her. No one had shown her the faintest inclination to ask her in marriage, or even express any particular admiration for her. She could not imagine any of the men whom she knew falling in love with her.
At balls or dinner-parties, she made conversation with her partners. They never grew to know one another more intimately. Sometimes she had heard girls talk of looking forward to some forthcoming entertainment because they knew that their particular friends would be there.
She herself did not care. She was on the same terms with all of them—polite, impersonal, mutually rather bored and boring.
The nearest approach to intercourse other than merely surface that she attained to, was with Queenie's most openly declared worshipper, Maurice Goldstein. His manner to all women verged upon the effusive, and Alex was secretly faintly ashamed of feeling slightly, but perceptibly, flattered at the deference which he showed her, and even at his favourite mannerism of gazing straight into her eyes as he shook hands with her on meeting or parting.
Although Lady Isabel never invited him to Clevedon Square, and sometimes spoke of him as "that dreadful young Jew who seems to get himself asked everywhere," she did not forbid Alex to dance with him, and he was the only young man of her acquaintance who invariably asked her to keep a second dance for him later in the evening.
She felt greatly curious as to his sentiment for Queenie, partly from youth's love of romance, partly from a desire to find out, if she could, both the cause and the effect of the process known as "falling in love."
If she knew more about it, she felt dimly, perhaps it might happen also to her.
One night, towards the end of the season, at the last big ball she was to attend that year, Alex was taken down to supper by Maurice Goldstein.
She was surprised, and for a moment flattered, for Queenie was also present, although she had apparently vouchsafed him neither word nor look.
Goldstein gave Alex his arm and conducted her ceremoniously downstairs to the supper-room.