“What do you mean? What has happened? Go on. Tell me.” This was forced confidence, in all conscience, and well for Anne that Ariel had no compunction about that. Indeed, she no more hesitated in compelling Anne’s confidence at this minute than she would have hesitated to knock a child, in danger of drowning, unconscious in order to save it. But the command in Ariel’s voice knocked Anne into consciousness, not out of it. She began at once telling Ariel, coherently and with detail, everything.
“Last year,” the ragged parrot-voice croaked out, “I made up my mind to be like other girls. I didn’t see why I wasn’t popular in the way they were—with men, I mean. I wanted so much to be. My roommate—and she’s my best friend, too—said it was because I was prudish. You can’t be prudish if you want invitations to fraternity dances and things. Patty told me how she worked it. She said she’d begun herself by not being very keen on necking, but it grew on you. So she got a few dates for me through her dates, and I went ahead, trying her plan out. But it didn’t work. I couldn’t pretend well enough. And then, of course, the dates didn’t repeat. I didn’t much mind, for if popularity came that way it wasn’t worth the price, I’d learned, you see. So I went in for Drama instead, and compensated by trying to make my dent acting. And I got quite happy again. Patty and I sort of drifted apart. But giving up the ambition to be popular was like coming out of prison and I could bear even losing Patty.
“Then all of a sudden, Ariel, the whole works went bang.... Because I met Prescott. And I had to laugh. For how can you really let a man kiss you so it counts, until you’re really and truly crazy for him to kiss you? I ask you?”
This last was no mere slang phrase. Anne was seriously asking Ariel. And Ariel replied sharply, “You can’t, of course. That’s the whole secret; anybody knows.”
Anne laughed, if one could call it laughter. It was neither sob nor speech, at any rate. And went on. “There’s something tremendous about wanting to be kissed like that. You don’t know whether it’s pain or bliss. It’s both, I guess, full up to the brim of your heart, really.... When he touched my hand, even by accident, it was like the world coming to an end. I thought I’d die of it. And it seemed to be like that with him too.
“Patty said I was coming along,—for I’d won back her respect again, attracting a man like Prescott. She warned me to be careful, though. But there has never been any danger. It was Prescott who was careful. So far as I was concerned he could have had anything he wanted of me. Why not? After kisses like that?
“But it didn’t affect him that way I guess. Just his loving me as much as he did was bliss. And I didn’t want him to want to marry me, after he explained to me his point of view on marriage and I had read ‘Stephen’s Fall,’ and all. It wouldn’t have been Prescott, you see, married stodgily to a nice girl! I was glad he was just himself and I was proud that he could tell me frankly just how much he didn’t care for me as well as how much he did, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes,” Ariel agreed. “I do know. Loving a person doesn’t mean wanting to change them, even if changing them would only mean their being able to love you better. You love them because they are the way they are....”
“Yes. And listen.—The last two days of vacation here, Prescott was different. Toward me, I mean. If he could manage it, he wasn’t alone with me. He’d stick around Glenn or you, or Mother. Any one! And he went for one walk all alone. Pretended he didn’t know I was waiting for him with my things on in the library. Just slipped out without my knowledge.
“I thought it was you that had changed him, Ariel. Imagine! But then he did keep saying how graceful you are and what lovely hair you’ve got. And that last morning when he went to sleep in the library—remember? That morning I was sure that he was crazy about you.