This feeling was deepened by the fact that Conny seemed to be specially bent on defeating [pg 64] Ramon’s ambition to be alone with the girl. If no one else joined them at the end of a dance, Conny was almost sure to do so, and to occupy the intermission with one of his ever-ready monologues, while Ramon sat silent and angry, wondering what Julia saw to admire in this windy fool, and occasionally daring to wonder whether she really saw anything in him after all.
But a sufficiently devoted lover is seldom wholly without a reward. There came an evening when Ramon found himself alone with her. And he was aware with a thrill that she had evaded not only Conny, but two other men. Her smile was friendly and encouraging, too, and yet he could not find anything to say which in the least expressed his feelings.
“Are you going to stay in this country long?” he began. The question sounded supremely casual, but it meant a great deal to him. He was haunted by a fear that she would depart suddenly, and he would never see her again. She smiled and looked away for a moment before replying, as though perhaps this was not exactly what she had expected him to say.
“I don’t know. Gordon wants mother and me to go back East this fall, but I don’t want to go and mother doesn’t want to leave Gordon alone.… We haven’t decided. Maybe I won’t go till next year.”
“I suppose you’ll go to college won’t you?”
“No; I wanted to go to Vassar and then study art, but mother says college spoils a girl for society. She thinks the way the Vassar girls walk is perfectly dreadful. I offered to go right on walking the same way, but she said anyway college makes girls so frightfully broad-minded.…”
Ramon laughed.
“What will you do then?”
“I’ll come out.”
“Out of what?”