“And I don’t think I should have known you.” She looked at me so quickly that I added, “You see—I am dazzled.”
“You do not approve?”
The truth is that I did not quite approve, and her question threw me off my guard. She must have read in my eyes, for such a hurt look came to the corners of her lips that I repeated hastily:
“My dear Anne, I am dazzled. Just think; I have come out of a gray world, and I am still blinking with astonishment. I can’t quite get used to it. You women are different from the women over there—more feminine, perhaps—but you represent something I had forgotten. Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m an old bear who comes to you, grumbling, out of the wet and the mud.”
“I see,” she said, and then, “but I do pay attention to what you say, so please be frank, as you always were, Davy.”
“I don’t think you would understand,” I began and then, struck by the absurdity of it, I broke into a laugh. “After all, it isn’t the slightest business of mine.”
“Am I any different from the rest?”
I looked into the dancing crowd.
“No, of course not.”
“Well—then?”