Alexina sprang up. She turned white, then scarlet.
“‘Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,’ Jean Garnier would say,” Molly began, unloosing her waist and laughing again. “Mais non, mon enfant, you take these things too seriously; it is time you understood. He has said as much to every pretty girl there, one time and another, and to most of their mothers before them, only they all understood. It’s very charming in you, of course, right now, and to a man like him, irresistible but, still—Malise—”
Alexina looked at Molly. Then up welled a red that rose to her hair and spread down her throat and over her bare young shoulders. She would never misunderstand again. It is a cruel thing, the hotness of shame. But Molly was staring. Malise was beautiful with her head so proudly up and her cheeks flaming.
There was more to understand. They were a gay crowd, the young people and their elders with whom Molly and Alexina and Georgy were going. Things came to Alexina slowly.
“It isn’t just nice,” she told Molly anxiously, an evening at the Willy Fields’; “Georgy says you’ve all been in the pantry opening more champagne. I’m sure they’re acting like there’s been enough, and he thinks, too, we ought to go home.”
“Good Lord,” said Molly. She looked so slender, so childishly innocent standing there where the daughter had drawn her aside, one couldn’t believe she had said it. “This is the way you used to go on when you were a child. One would think you’d had your fill of what people ought to do, living with the Blairs.”
Alexina looked at her. That Molly should dare allude to that past this way! Then she went and found her mother’s wrap and brought it.
“Put it on,” she said.
Molly laughed rebelliously, then waveringly.
“We are going home,” said the daughter.