"You won't even let me hold your hand," she heard him say. "You make me miserable, Virginia. When I am at home alone, I get to thinking over your coldness and indifference, and it nearly drives me crazy. Why did you jerk your hand away so quickly just now?"
"I don't see what you were talking to a drummer about me for, in a public place like that," the girl answered, in pouting tones.
"Why, it was this way, Virginia—now don't be silly!" protested Chester. "You see, this Masters and I were at college together, and rather intimate, and down at the store we were standing talking when you came in the front to buy something. He said he thought you were really the prettiest girl he had ever seen, and he was begging me to introduce him to you."
"Introduce him!" Virginia snapped. "I don't want to know him. And so you stood there talking about me!"
"It was only a minute, Virginia, and I couldn't help it," Chester declared. "I didn't think you'd care to know him, but I had to treat him decently. I told him how particular your mother was, and that I couldn't manage it. Oh, he's simply daft about you. He passed you on the road this morning, and hasn't been able to talk about anything since. But who could blame him, Virginia? You can form no idea of how pretty you are in the eyes of other people. Frankly, in a big gathering of women you'd create a sensation. You've got what every society woman in the country would die to have, perfect beauty of face and form, and the most remarkable part about it is your absolute unconsciousness of it all. I've seen good-looking women in the best sets in Augusta and Savannah and Atlanta, but they all seem to be actually making up before your very eyes. Do you know, it actually makes me sick to see a woman all rigged out in a satin gown so stiff that it looks like she's encased in some metallic painted thing that moves on rollers. It's beauty unadorned that you've got, and it's the real thing."
"I don't want to talk about myself eternally," said Virginia, rather sharply, the eavesdropper thought, "and I don't see why you seem to think I do. When you are sensible and talk to me about what we have both read and thought, I like you better."
"Oh, you want me to be a sort of Luke King, who put all sorts of fancies in your head when you were too young to know what they meant. You'd better let those dreams alone, Virginia, and get down to everyday facts. My love for you is a reality. It's a big force in my life. I find myself thinking about you and your coldness from early morning till late at night. Last Monday you were to come to the Henry Spring, and I was there long before the time, and stayed in agony of suspense for four hours, but I had my walk for nothing."
"I couldn't come," Ann Boyd heard the sweet voice say. "Mother gave me some work to do, and I had no excuse; besides, I don't like to deceive her. She's harsh and severe, but I don't like to do anything she would disapprove of."
"You don't really care much for me," said Langdon—"that is the whole thing in a nutshell."
Virginia was silent, and Ann Boyd bit her lip and clinched her hands tightly. The very words and tone of enforced reproach came back to her across the rolling surf of time. She was for a moment lost in retrospection. The young girl behind the bushes seemed suddenly to be herself, her companion the dashing young Preston Chester, the prince of planters and slave-holders. Langdon's insistent voice brought back the present.