“I have no patience with you,” said Paul. “She looks twenty because she is wonderful. You are blind. You cannot see. It is because her father is an old man that she is so spoiled and so wonderful. Doctor Joseph is twenty years older than his wife and consequently Muriel is precocious.”
“Doctor Joseph is about a thousand years older than his wife in brains,” I said, laughing. “I do not fancy Mrs. Joseph. She is a hard woman.”
Thus we discussed people who looked upon us as the silly goslings that we certainly were—fluffy, callow birds, not half-fledged.
The eve of the dance arrived at last. I thought it never would come, and half-hoped it would not, or that I had not been invited. I wished to get it over. I hated to go, yet could not stay away.
I wore my first evening clothes that night. I had only worn them a very few times before and knew exactly how green and gawky I was. I feared that my shyness and simplicity would make her smile, which did not increase my confidence in myself.
I went to the dance in a high fever and when she greeted me I blushed. She looked at me with kind eyes—eyes that understood. How I love people who understand and can let you know without words. The understanding eye is one thing, the knowing eye is another. Muriel had the former, with no gleam of the latter.
We call the mounting of a jewel a setting, and the word “setting” seems to me the only fitting word to use regarding Muriel’s dress, it so completed her. She was set in a severely plain but beautiful gown of bluish or purplish gauzy brocaded stuff which appeared to me more like an artistic drapery than a mere woman’s dress. I know the tint intensified her pallor. I noticed this time, too, that a delicate pink flush flitted beneath her skin when she became animated. This colour was not a blush and could hardly be called colour; it was the shadow of a shade of pink which came and went like magic. She was entirely without ornament of any kind except a small diamond star she wore in her hair, which was done plainly, a large artistic knot resting low down upon the nape of her neck.
I knew, after the dance, that everything Paul had said of Muriel was true. It was even far short of the truth. There were many, many things which he had not said of her, that I could have told him, for, of course, I saw everything—everything that was there, along with many attributes that were not there. I was in love with a woman, not this time with the detail of a woman, but with every dear part of her. I believe she saw it at once. I was a new experience to her. Her men friends and admirers had all been of the sophisticated world. I had the charm of freshness for her. I was frank, I blushed easily and frequently, I could not dance—really I was a most rare and uncommon boy.
My admiration must have been very apparent. Paul saw it and did not resent it. He thought it was only admiration. He could not imagine such audacity in me as love for the incomparable Muriel. Even if he could have imagined it, he would have laughed the idea to scorn; for did not Muriel know him, admire him, love him? Did he not dance with grace and sing to command admiration?
“Jack Wesblock? Bah! A mere gawk!” he would have said, without hesitation.