John observed that they had been walking along the path. On her suggestion they sat down together upon the moss, the softness of which he failed to determine.
He was critical about women. A single defect—a thick ankle, a hoarse voice, a glass eye—was enough to make him utterly indifferent. And here for the first time in his life he was beside a girl who seemed to him the incarnation of physical perfection.
“Are you from the East?” asked Kismine with charming interest.
“No,” answered John simply. “I’m from Hades.”
Either she had never heard of Hades, or she could think of no pleasant comment to make upon it, for she did not discuss it further.
“I’m going East to school this fall,” she said. “D’you think I’ll like it? I’m going to New York to Miss Bulge’s. It’s very strict, but you see over the weekends I’m going to live at home with the family in our New York house, because father heard that the girls had to go walking two by two.”
“Your father wants you to be proud,” observed John.
“We are,” she answered, her eyes shining with dignity. “None of us has ever been punished. Father said we never should be. Once when my sister Jasmine was a little girl she pushed him downstairs and he just got up and limped away.
“Mother was—well, a little startled,” continued Kismine, “when she heard that you were from—from where you are from, you know. She said that when she was a young girl—but then, you see, she’s a Spaniard and old-fashioned.”
“Do you spend much time out here?” asked John, to conceal the fact that he was somewhat hurt by this remark. It seemed an unkind allusion to his provincialism.