“I thought it even after she came back––even after my talk with Stuyvesant. He told me I was a fool and that Frances wouldn’t listen to me. I didn’t believe him and put it up to her. And then––for the first time––I saw that what I had been learning she had not been learning.”
Don turned and looked at the girl by his side. It was growing dark now, so that he could not see her very well; but he saw that she was huddled up as he had found her that day in the little restaurant.
“Frances didn’t have the nerve to come with me,” he said. “Her father stood in the way, and she couldn’t get by him. I want to be fair about this. At the beginning, if she’d come with me I’d have married her––though Lord knows how it would have worked out. But she didn’t dare––and she’s a pretty good sport, too. There’s a lot in her she doesn’t know anything about. It would do her good to know you.”
Again he paused. It was as if he were trying hard to keep his balance.
“I want her to know you,” he went on. 284 “Because, after all, it was she who made me see you. There, in a second, in the park, she pointed you out to me, until you stood before me as clear as the star by the Big Dipper. She said, ‘It’s some other girl you’re seeing in me––a girl who would dare to go hungry with you.’ Then I knew. So I came right to you.”
She was still huddled up.
“And here I am,” he concluded.
There he was. He did not need to remind her of that. Even when she closed her eyes so that she might not see him, she was aware of it. Even when he was through talking and she did not hear his voice, she was aware of it. And, though she was miserable about it, she would have been more miserable had he been anywhere else.
“I’m here, little girl,” he said patiently.