If there was one thing she knew well, it was Clarence's love-making. Indeed, she had come to the point where Clarence's remarks scarcely constituted love-making at all in her eyes. They were merely his kind of manners, and she was a little tired of them.
"Good heavens! How on earth am I going to convince you?" she heard him say, with a little surprise. This was not the kind of thing he said ordinarily. "Joy, I fell in love with you, the real kind of love, the first night I saw you. You've known it all along. I wish you'd stop pretending not to—I'm getting tired of it. I want to marry you—I'd marry you tonight if you said the word. I'll come over and get you tomorrow and marry you if you'll let me. I don't suppose you will. But I do expect to keep on at you till you do.... Good heaven, child, haven't you seen I was in earnest?" he broke off at the expression of her wide-open eyes.
Joy believed in love at first sight, as she had every personal reason to, but in spite of Clarence's intensity she was not quite convinced. She looked up at him. He was white, and his mouth was tense. And he was holding her like a vise. He was in earnest.
"Maybe—maybe you think you do mean it now." she said breathlessly. "If you do—I'm sorry for you. It isn't nice to be in love unless the other person is, too."
"What do you know about it?" he burst out angrily. "You aren't in love with that virtuous citizen of yours, whether or not he is with you. Let him go back to Gail. She's been considering one of her tame cats for a year, and she'd about decided to marry him when you came along and broke it up. You'd sweep any man off his feet. You and I belong together, Joy darling. I'm going to marry you, if you were engaged to the whole College of Surgeons."
"The dance is over," said Joy a little faintly.
"Then come over here where it's quiet. I haven't finished."
"Oh, please no—" cried Joy, freeing herself from his hold eagerly. This was getting unexpectedly like earnest, and it had been a shock. She did not want to hear any more about how Clarence felt.
She hurried across the floor without waiting for him, to where Allan and Phyllis were still standing together. They had stolen a dance with each other—they danced together altogether too much for married people, anyway, Mrs. Hewitt said.
The atmosphere of happiness and serenity that was about Phyllis was something Joy could always rest in thankfully. Her own moods alternated so that Phyllis' calmness was an especial comfort.