“Like to dance?” he asked.
“I love it!”
Then this would be merely an evening like other evenings. He would dance with her, spend more money than he could afford, and then forget her. She was not different, after all. There never had been any girl like the one he had dreamed of, or invented, last night in the firelight.
“What a fool I was!” he thought.
He wanted to laugh at himself, and could not; it hurt too much. He so badly needed the girl who did not exist—that honest, friendly, lovely little thing with the innocent glamour of childhood still about her. He glanced at the real one, sitting beside him. By the passing lights he could see her face, which was turned toward the window.
“She doesn’t know anything about me,[Pg 521]” he thought. “She doesn’t care. All she wants is a ‘good time’!”
He took out his cigarette case and tendered it to her.
“No, thank you,” she said.
“I will, if you don’t mind,” said Kirby, and that was all he did say.
He sat back in his corner, smoking, lost in his own thoughts. It was a long drive, for he was taking her to a road house just outside the city—a third-rate sort of place.