“Explain!” she cried. “Who do you think would believe me?”
He was about to speak, but when he looked at her, he could not. Some faint comprehension of her point of view came[Pg 99] to him. The more he looked, the better he understood.
Grief had dignified her. Her tear-stained face, her brimming eyes, her trembling lip, distressed him beyond measure. He was an honest and kind-hearted fellow, and even something more than that. In his way, he was chivalrous. He felt deeply ashamed just then to remember that only a few hours before he had thought it rather comic to be taking out a waitress. He regretted the harmless but not very decorous jokes that he and his friends had made about the episode. He wished he had shown his gratitude in some other way. She wasn’t a waitress—she was a forlorn and miserable girl whom his ill-behavior had got into a situation which she regarded as serious.
“I’ll make it all right,” he said earnestly, wondering how this might be done.
“Well, you ought to!” she replied.
She didn’t mean to be ungracious or unkind, but she was in anguish. Neither she nor any of the people she knew could take such things lightly. She saw herself irretrievably disgraced, her haughty respectability forever tarnished. She knew so well what the girls at Compson’s would say!
She had been so proud of her discretion, of her superiority! She had been so very cautious about “strange gentlemen”! And to be away from home all night! She couldn’t bear it. Grief and resentment drove her to tears again.
“Don’t!” entreated Bradley. “Please don’t! I’ll make it all right, somehow—I give you my word I will!”
What he meant was that he would fly to some sympathetic feminine spirit, who could and would make it right for him.