she had somehow grown luminous, perilous, obscurely menacing
to nice girls and the young men they intended eventually to
accept. Suddenly, at the sight, a rage of possessorship
awoke in her. She must save Darrow, assert her right to him
at any price. Pride and reticence went down in a hurricane
of jealousy. She heard him laugh, and there was something
new in his laugh...She watched him talking, talking...He sat
slightly sideways, a faint smile beneath his lids, lowering
his voice as he lowered it when he talked to her. She
caught the same inflections, but his eyes were different.
It would have offended her once if he had looked at her like
that. Now her one thought was that none but she had a right
to be so looked at. And that girl of all others! What
illusions could he have about a girl who, hardly a year ago,
had made a fool of herself over the fat young man stolidly
eating terrapin across the table? If that was where romance
and passion ended, it was better to take to district
visiting or algebra!

All night she lay awake and wondered: "What was she saying
to him? How shall I learn to say such things?" and she
decided that her heart would tell her--that the next time
they were alone together the irresistible word would spring
to her lips. He came the next day, and they were alone, and
all she found was: "I didn't know that you and Kitty Mayne
were such friends."

He answered with indifference that he didn't know it either,
and in the reaction of relief she declared: "She's certainly
ever so much prettier than she was..."