Ada Struggles met young men at church functions, and spoke with them at Sunday School, but she had few opportunities of greater intimacy, and was not the lady to waste so rare a chance as this. Peter droned on amongst his books and presently was lost in reading one. Ada lost herself in nothing except a burning desire, to monopolize Sam. Books did not interest Ada: getting married did.
The trouble was that in the days of his school’s comparative prosperity, Peter had done Ada rather well. Perhaps as a schoolmaster himself, he got special consideration over terms, but at any rate he had sent her to a good boarding school. She had received the education of a lady, and it wasn’t fair, it didn’t chime with the fitness of things that she should now be the daughter of an impractical curate. Her case, to some extent, was parallel with Sam’s: the past of both had augured well, and the future depended on their wits.
There, however, the parallel ceased, for Ada had few wits, but she had moods, and the reverse side of the moping discontent, which was endemic with her, was the meretricious brilliance she now paraded for Sam’s entanglement. Ada was “all out” after her prey, in her best clothes and her best, that is, her most captivatingly genial manners.
Sam thought that she illuminated that dingy book-surrounded room. They were not gay books with gilded bindings, but solid, well-worn volumes of ponderous aspect. The books repelled and Ada invited. Youth called to youth: youth answered to the call.
He was obsessed with his idea of accent, and the worldly value of superiority in speech. Ada’s first appeal to him, though she did not know it, was that she spoke well; her second was that she was her father’s daughter; her third, as she knew perfectly, was the helplessness which she used cunningly to flatter his masculine importance. She told him without a word that he was a strong, powerful man, and she a flower which he might pluck and wear. And she did the anemone business quite effectively.
There was not much of Ada, and what there was was not remarkable, but she was fluffy and frilly and feminine in the feebler way. She had on something that was not silk but suggested the rustle of silk. After all, it was not Ada’s fault that it was not silk, or that her intimate underclothing was of flannelette; she could only use the opportunities she had, and they were few.
But she had the prettiness, the rather silly and never lasting prettiness, which accompanies anæmia.
It would not wear, and she knew that it would not wear. She was becoming desperate. Sam was sent by heaven.
He thought so, too. Old Struggles read “Marcus Aurelius,” standing by his book-shelf, utterly forgetful of his guest, and the guest thought that Peter’s preoccupation was also instructed by heaven. It left him free for Ada.
What he said to Ada and what Ada said to him were things of no importance: their serious conversation was not conducted by their tongues, but by their eyes.