Not even to herself, either before or since Desboro's letter which had revealed him so unmistakably, had the girl ventured in her inmost thoughts to think the things which this big, blond, loutish boy had babbled.
What Desboro was, she understood. She had had the choice of dismissing him from her mind, with scorn and outraged pride as aids to help the sacrifice, or of accepting him as he was—as she knew him to be—for the sake of something about him as yet inexplicable even to herself.
And she had chosen.
But now a man of Desboro's world had asked her to be his wife. More than that; he had assumed that she was fitted to be the wife of anybody.
They walked back together. She was adorable with him, kind, timidly sympathetic and smilingly silent by turns, venturing even to rally him a little, console him a little, moved by an impulse toward friendship wholly unfeigned.
"All I have to say is," he muttered, "that you're a peach and a corker; and I'm going to invent some way of marrying you, even if it lands me in an East Side night-school."
Even he joined in her gay laughter; and presently Van Alstyne, who had been glowering at them, managed to get her away. But she would have nothing further to do with greenhouses, or dark landings, or libraries; so he asked her bluntly while they were dancing; and she shook her head, and very soon dropped his arm.
There was a bay-window near them; she made a slight gesture of irritation; and there, in the partly curtained seclusion, he learned that she was grateful and happy that he liked her so much; that she liked him very much, but that she loved somebody else.
He took it rather badly at first; she began to understand that few girls would have lightly declined a Van Alstyne; and he was inclined to be patronising, sulky and dignified—an impossible combination—for it ditched him finally, and left him kissing her hands and declaring constancy eternal.