When I got back to the dormitory, somebody was waiting for me in the reception-room, and it was Gerald. He drew me over to a window, talking all the way.
"Cosma," he said, "by jove, I never heard anything like that. I say—how did you ever get them to let you do it?... They'd never seen it? Rich—rich! You sweet dove of an anarchist, you—"
"Don't Gerald," I said.
"Ripping," said he, "simply ripping! I never saw anything so beautiful as you before all that raft. You looked like the well-known angels, Cosma. And you ought to see my portrait of you now! You dear!"
"Don't, Gerald," I said.
He stared at me. "I say—you aren't taking to heart that miserable hundred dollars! Cosma dearest! Oh, I'm mad about you ... this June, ... this June—"
"Please, please, Gerald," I said. "Don't you see? Those girls there to-day. They're your sort and your people's sort. I'm not that...."
He set himself to explain something to me. I could see it in his sudden attitude. "Look here, Cosma," he said; "don't you understand the joy it would be for a man to have a hand in training the girl he wants to have for his wife?" At that, I looked at him with attention. "Let me be," he went on, "your teacher, lover, husband. Gad, think what it will be to have the shaping of the woman you will make! Can't you understand a man being mad about that?"
I answered him very carefully. "A man, maybe. But not the woman."
"What?" said Gerald blankly.