“You drive well for not being used to the city,” she ventures.
“It’s good fun,” you explain. “Much more dangerous than the life out there. And you mean to say that you do a lot of driving? In streets like those in town? Brave girl!”
Safe from the eyes of any university official, she takes a cigarette. Your silence and proximity are very thrilling; there will be a lot to tell the room mate when she gets back. Or perhaps it would be better not to say too much—to act as if this sort of out-of-town friend is to be expected from a background like Dorothy’s. She is rather different than the usual co-ed, anyway, she thinks comfortably. More interesting friends, on the whole. Of course these little boys are all right when you have nothing else....
Stop the car on the edge of the Hawk Bluff, which in the sober light of common day looks out over a not-very-far-down golf course, but which now hangs over mysterious abysses.
“Dorothy,” you say.
It has come at last; she knows it and turns to you with the fatal feeling of one for whom circumstance has been too strong. And then nothing happens for a minute.
“You are a lovely child,” you say. Then, very quickly, draw her to you and kiss her on the brow. And then drive home through the quiet night. Anyway, it is quiet until you reach town and the boisterous returning students.
Home again, an hour before she has to be. Stand in the light-speckled gloom of the verandah and say farewell.
“So very, very nice of Jen. I’ll never forget it. Something to remember when I go back.... Lovely child.”
And without even another kiss on the brow you are gone.