They circled the floor again, but her feet were heavy, and the knowledge that she was dancing badly added to her effort. Phrases half formed themselves in her mind and escaped. She wanted to be able to carry off the situation well, to make her meaning clear in some graceful, indirect way, but she could not.
"It's this way," she said. "I'm not your kind. Maybe I talked that way for a while, but I'm not really. I—well—I'm not. I wish you'd leave me alone. I really do."
The music ended with a crash, and two thumps of many feet echoed the last two notes. He still held her close, and she felt that inexplicable charm like the attraction of a magnet for steel.
"You really do?" His tone thrilled her with an intoxicating warmth. The smile in his eyes was both caressing and confident. Consciously she kept back the answering smile it commanded, looking at him gravely.
"I really do."
"All right." His quick acquiescence was exactly what she had wanted, and it made her unhappy. They walked back to the table, and for hours she was very gay, watching him dance with momma and Louise. She crowded into the tonneau during their quick, restless dashes from one dancing place to the next. She laughed a great deal, and when they met Duddy and Bob somewhere a little after midnight she danced with each of them. But she felt that having a good time was almost as hard work as earning a living.
It was nearly two weeks before she went out again with momma and Louise, and this time she did not see him at all. Louise was astonished by his failure to telephone.
"What in the world did you do with that Kennedy man?" she wanted to know. "You must have been an awful boob. Why, he was simply dippy about you. Believe me, I'd have strung him along if I'd had your chance. And a machine like a palace car, too!" she mourned.
"Oh, well, baby, Helen doesn't know much about handling men," momma comforted her. "She did the best she could. You never can tell about 'em, anyway. And maybe he's out of town."
But this was not true, for Louise had seen him only that afternoon with a stunning girl in a million dollars' worth of sables.