Her humor changed as he turned away from her and she restrained him with a hand on his arm, her eyes seeking his.
“You’re my sort, Phil, not hers,” she whispered earnestly. “You’re a vagabond—a vagrant on life’s highway, as I am—a failure, as I am, only a worse one. You’ve tried to stem the tide against you, but you couldn’t. What have you to do with Jane Loring’s bourgeois respectability? Do you think you’ll be immune because of her? Do you think that she can cleanse you of the blood of your fathers and make you over on her own prim pattern? You’re run in a different mold. What Jane Loring wants is a stupid respectable Dodo, an impoverished patriarch with an exclusive visiting list. Let her buy one in the open market. The clubs are full of them.” She laughed aloud. “What does Jane Loring know of you? What chance have you——?”
“I think I’ve heard enough, Nina,” said Gallatin. He walked to the dining-room and stood, waiting for her to pass before him. She paused, shrugged her shoulders carelessly and, as she passed through the door, she leaned toward him and whispered.
“You’ll never marry her, Phil. Do you hear? Never!”
Gallatin inclined his head slightly and followed.
The dance was in full swing, and outside in the enclosed veranda a game of “Pussy Wants a Corner” had come to an end because Sam Purviance insisted upon standing in the middle of the floor and reciting tearfully the tale of “Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog.” Then they tried charades which failed because the actors insisted on disappearing into the wings and couldn’t be made to appear, and because the audience found personal problems more interesting. A game of “Follow My Leader,” led by Larry Kane upstairs and down, developed such amazing feats of gymnastics that Nellie Pennington rebelled.
Phil Gallatin followed Jane with his eyes, but she refused even to glance in his direction and he was very unhappy. There seemed no chance of getting a word with her, for when at the end of the dance he approached her, she snubbed him very prettily and went out with Van Duyn to sit among the palms at the end of the veranda. Gallatin felt very much like the fool Nina had said he was and wandered around from group to group joining half-heartedly in their conversations, his uneasiness apparent to any who chose to perceive. Several times Nina Jaffray passed him smiling wickedly, and once she stopped and whispered.
“Hadn’t you better go home in my car, Phil? I don’t believe there will be room for you in Jane’s.”
He laughed with an air of unconcern he was very far from feeling.
“Thanks, I’m afraid you’d take me to Hoboken.”