They decided to walk by way of Potter’s Park to see the flowers. René could hardly get his words out, but he felt that he must do something to explain.
“You may be disappointed, you know. It mayn’t be all that you think it is.”
“Oh, but I have seen the outside of the house, and one knows what to expect. I mean, if you saw the outside of our house you’d know the inside was pretty much the same as hundreds of others. The curtains always give you away. And nearly all the houses on this side of Thrigsby are like yours. When I was at school I knew a girl who lived next door to you. And, of course, I’m excited because it is—don’t you think—reassuring when you are fond of people to know that they have relations like the rest of the world.”
René’s shyness, the delicacy of his feelings had forced upon her the use of the phrase, “fond of each other.” For all the excitement she had roused in him he had never become possessive nor made any attempt to assert a monopoly. And one evening when she had flirted with M’Elroy at the tennis club he had left her to it, apparently not at all distressed, and subsequently he visited on her none of the jealousy she had expected. With M’Elroy her relationship had become nothing but jealousy, and she preferred René’s diffidence to that. And also, as she had shaped René outwardly, so inwardly she hoped to mold him to her liking. M’Elroy was too conceited for that.
“I promise you I shan’t be disappointed,” she said.
“I want to ask you not to mind anything my father may say. He does talk so. I hoped he would not be in.”
“You dear silly, I shan’t mind anything. I shall like it. I want to see how you live, and if I don’t like anything it will only be the more wonderful that you are you.”
He gripped her arm very tight. She laughed though he hurt her. It was the first uninvited caress he had given her.
“You are so strong,” she said, and she took his arm and did not relinquish it until they came to the gate of 166.
To his dismay René found Elsie with his father and mother. She declared that she had only dropped in, but she was arrayed in her most garish best and had put on her primmest and most artificial manner, talking mincingly like a chorus girl. And she patronized Linda, swaggered over her as the married woman, chattered about her darling baby, and made the party so uncomfortable that Linda could not hold her own, and a gloom would have descended on them had not Mr. Fourmy come to the rescue and told droll stories, spiced and hot, of the doings of women in various parts of the world. He cut into Elsie’s gushing stories with the story of the marine and the admiral’s French governess, and wound up: