Then, with his mouth full of sandwich, the young man kissed Dorothy, who performed the same idiotic gesture on him in return.
Now no really sensitive person likes to see other persons in the act of an embrace, and Amory was exquisitely sensitive. And in this hard world it is the sensitive person who suffers for the dull. Further, even suffering takes a keener edge when you are seen to suffer. Therefore the least that Dorothy and her smart young man could have done, when, turning, they became aware of Amory’s presence, would have been to spare her the gratuitous pain of looking at her. But they did not. Having outraged her, they stared at her. They stared at her almost as if they asked her what she meant by stealing upon them like that. It struck Amory as it had never struck her before that Glenerne would have been Dorothy’s proper place. If this was the way she carried on during lunch time at Hallowells’, nothing at the boarding-house would have shocked her.
“Hallo!” said Dorothy, not (Amory thought) exactly welcomingly.
Still, if Dorothy had no tact, that was no reason why Amory should not act up to her own finest instincts. The truest delicacy would be to let it be supposed that she had noticed nothing. Therefore she too said “Hallo!” very brightly. They must not guess that they had caused her pain.
At first Amory thought that Dorothy was not going to introduce her friend, but when Dorothy did so, in three words—“My cousin Stan”—she was able to guess that even Dorothy was not quite without some sense of shame and confusion. Her cousin! Such unfertility of invention would have done discredit even to Jellies! But of course Dorothy was embarrassed, and had said the first thing that had come into her head. Amory bowed with reserve to “the cousin,” who, for his part, seemed inclined to laugh. Very rudely, he pulled out his watch.
“By Jove, a quarter to two! I must cut, Dot. Dusty’ll be looking for me. See you at tea-time? Right, I’ll ring you up. So long.”
And with scarce a look at Amory he was off.
No sooner had he gone than Amory broke into voluble speech.
“My dear, what a place! I’ve been looking everywhere for you this last half-hour—upstairs, downstairs, everywhere! I was almost sure I remembered the way to the studio—wasn’t it past a square room that has a painting in it now?”
“It was, but they moved us two months ago,” Dorothy replied. “Did you ask for me?”