She was full of assurance, and of a sweet timidity. It seemed to David she was so high above him she could fulfill whatever whim she wanted and lose not one jot of her stature. Such a whim, doubtless, was this.
“Oh, I should love to come.... I didn’t—I didn’t really——” he stopped. “Do you really want me to come, Miss Daindrie?”
She saw that he was serious. “Why should I ask you?”
That was convincing. “I don’t see,” he said, “what you could possibly find of interest in me.”
It was the beginning of the impulse he was always to have with her to speak out his mind.
She answered him seriously too.
“I want to find out, perhaps,” she said.
They were in a box at a theater. It was a special matinee of a comedy by Bernard Shaw: a strange new genius out of Ireland. Cornelia and Miss Daindrie had arranged the party.
“Shaw deserves to be supported,” Cornelia explained; even Tom had been willing to come.
She heard every word that passed between David and Miss Daindrie. Her neighbor in the Box was a young man she had never met before. He found her strangely distracted between the curtains. He said to her: “But after all, Miss Rennard, what are we to think of this man Shaw?” She answered, vigorously nodding: “Yes, indeed.” David was going to call? What a stubborn child he had been! A good sign, deeply. She believed she could see. Unknown to himself, he was struggling against Helen. He had an assured, comradeful way with women—the way of a boy: it was gone. A visit to a girl might mean nothing. After these resistances and the silence behind their questionings as they looked at each other, he might well ask why she wanted him to come. It was a bit disconcerting for the young man beside Cornelia.