him her opinion of two plays she had seen with—it was implied—adoring gentlemen beside her. She had read up very carefully on the plays in the morning paper and chosen two concerning which she could garner the most information.
“Oh,” he said in dismay, “you’ve seen ‘Dulcy’? I have two seats for it—but you won’t want to go again.”
“Oh, no, I don’t mind,” she protested truthfully. “You see, we went late, and anyway I adored it.”
But he wouldn’t hear of her sitting through it again—besides, he had seen it himself. It was a play Yanci was mad to see, but she was compelled to watch him while he exchanged the tickets for others, and for the poor seats available at the last moment. The game seemed difficult at times.
“By the way,” he said afterwards as they drove back to the hotel in a taxi, “you’ll be going down to the Princeton prom tomorrow, won’t you?”
She started. She had not realized that it would be so soon or that he would know of it.
“Yes,” she answered coolly. “I’m going down tomorrow afternoon.”
“On the 2:20, I suppose,” Scott commented. And then, “Are you going to meet the boy who’s taking you down—at Princeton?”
For an instant she was off her guard.
“Yes, he’ll meet the train.”
“Then I’ll take you to the station,” proposed Scott. “There’ll be a crowd, and you may have trouble getting a porter.”
She could think of nothing to say, no valid objection to make. She wished she had said that she was going by automobile, but she could conceive of no graceful and plausible way of amending her first admission.
“That’s mighty sweet of you.”
“You’ll be at the Ritz when you come back?”
“Oh, yes,” she answered. “I’m going to keep my rooms.”
Her bedroom was the smallest and least expensive in the hotel.
She concluded to let him put her on the train for Princeton; in fact, she saw no alternative. Next day as she packed her suitcase after luncheon the situation had taken such hold of her imagination that she filled it with the very things she would have chosen had she really been going to the prom. Her intention was to get out at the first stop and take the train back to New York.
Scott called for her at half past one and they took a taxi to the Pennsylvania Station. The train was crowded as he had expected, but he found her a seat and stowed her grip in the rack overhead.
“I’ll call you Friday to see how you’ve behaved,” he said.
“All right. I’ll be good.”
Their eyes met and in an instant, with an inexplicable, only half-conscious rush of emotion, they were in perfect communion. When Yanci came back, the glance seemed to say, ah, then——
A voice startled her ear:
“Why, Yanci!”
Yanci looked around. To her horror she recognized a girl named Ellen Harley, one of those to whom she had phoned upon her arrival.
“Well, Yanci Bowman! You’re the last person I ever expected to see. How are you?”
Yanci introduced Scott. Her heart was beating violently.
“Are you coming to the prom? How perfectly slick!” cried Ellen. “Can I sit here with you? I’ve been wanting to see you. Who are you going with?”
“No one you know.”
“Maybe I do.”
Her words, falling like sharp claws on Yanci’s sensitive soul, were interrupted by an unintelligible outburst from the conductor. Scott bowed to Ellen, cast at Yanci one level glance and then hurried off.
The train started. As Ellen arranged her grip and threw off her fur coat Yanci looked around her. The car was gay with girls whose excited chatter filled the damp, rubbery air like smoke. Here and there sat a chaperon, a mass of decaying rock in a field of flowers, predicting with a mute and somber fatality the end of all gayety and all youth. How many times had Yanci herself been one of such a crowd, careless and happy, dreaming of the men she would meet, of the battered hacks waiting at the station, the snow-covered campus, the big open fires in the clubhouses, and the imported orchestra beating out defiant melody against the approach of morning.
And now—she was an intruder, uninvited, undesired. As at the Ritz on the day of her arrival, she felt that at any instant her mask would be torn from her and she would be exposed as a pretender to the gaze of all the car.
“Tell me everything!” Ellen was saying. “Tell me what you’ve been doing. I didn’t see you at any of the football games last fall.”
This was by way of letting Yanci know that she had attended them herself.
The conductor was bellowing from the rear of the car, “Manhattan Transfer next stop!”
Yanci’s cheeks burned with shame. She wondered what she had best do—meditating a confession, deciding against it, answering Ellen’s chatter in frightened monosyllables—then, as with an ominous thunder of brakes the speed of the train began to slacken, she sprang on a despairing impulse to her feet.
“My heavens!” she cried. “I’ve forgotten my shoes! I’ve got to go back and get them.”
Ellen reacted to this with annoying efficiency.
“I’ll take your suitcase,” she said quickly, “and you can call for it. I’ll be at the Charter Club.”
“No!” Yanci almost shrieked. “It’s got my dress in it!”
Ignoring the lack of logic in her own remark, she swung the suitcase off the rack with what seemed to her a superhuman effort and went reeling down the aisle, stared at curiously by the arrogant eyes of many girls. When she reached the platform just as the train came to a stop she felt weak and shaken. She stood on the hard cement which marks the quaint old village of Manhattan Transfer and tears were streaming down her cheeks as she watched the unfeeling cars speed off to Princeton with their burden of happy youth.
After half an hour’s wait Yanci got on a train and returned to New York. In thirty minutes she had lost the confidence that a week had gained for her. She came back to her little room and lay down quietly upon the bed.
X
By Friday Yanci’s spirits had partly recovered from their chill depression. Scott’s voice over the telephone in mid-morning was like a tonic, and she told him of the delights of Princeton with convincing enthusiasm, drawing vicariously upon a prom she had attended there two years before. He was anxious to see her, he said. Would she come to dinner and the theatre that night? Yanci considered, greatly tempted. Dinner—she had been economizing on meals, and a gorgeous dinner in some extravagant show place followed by a musical comedy appealed to her starved fancy, indeed; but instinct told her that the time was not yet right. Let him wait. Let him dream a little more, a little longer.
“I’m too tired, Scott,” she said with an air of extreme frankness; “that’s the whole truth of the matter. I’ve been out every night since I’ve been here, and I’m really half-dead. I’ll rest up on this house party over the weekend and then I’ll go to dinner with you any day you want me.”
There was a minute’s silence while she held the phone expectantly.
“Lot of resting up you’ll do on a house party,” he replied; “and, anyway, next week is so far off. I’m awfully anxious to see you, Yanci.”
“So am I, Scott.”
She allowed the faintest caress to linger on his name. When she had hung up she felt happy