"Thrash him?" I wondered.
"For getting you talked about ... off there in the woods all afternoon!"
"We weren't——" I began, but suddenly I saw the white bolls of the sycamores redden with the westering sun; we must have been three hours covering what was at most a half hour's walk. "Don't be vulgar, Forester," I went on, with my chin in the air.
"Oh, well," was my brother's parting shot, "I don't know as I ought to make any objection, seeing you didn't."
That, I felt, was the weakness of my position; I not only hadn't made any objection, I hadn't felt any shame; the annoyance, the hurt of outraged maidenliness, whatever was the traditional attitude, hadn't come. Inwardly I burned with the woods afire, the red west, the white star like a torch that came out above it. On the way home Helmeth Garrett rode with us as far as the main road and was particularly attentive to Pauline and Flora Haines. I remember it came to me dimly that there was something designedly protective in this; there was more or less veiled innuendo flying about which failed to get through to me. Pauline put it quite plainly for me when she came to talk things over the day after the picnic. She was sympathetic.
"Oh, my dear, it must be dreadful for you," she cooed; "a perfect stranger, and getting you talked about that way!"
"So I am talked about?"
"My dear, what could you expect? And in plain sight of us. If you had only pushed him away, or something."
"I couldn't," I said, "I was so ... astonished." In the night I had found myself explaining to Pauline how this affair of Helmeth Garrett had differed importantly from all similar instances; now I saw its shining surfaces dimmed with comment like unwiped glass.
"That's just what I said!" Pauline was pleased with herself. "I told Belle Endsleigh you weren't used to that sort of thing ... you were completely overcome. But of course he wasn't really a gentleman or he wouldn't have done it." I do not know why at this moment it occurred to me that probably Henry Mills hadn't proposed to Pauline after all, but before I could frame a discreet question she was off in another direction.