Griffiths, for instance, had invited him for dinner. That would
be sufficiently overawing and compelling to her. But upon
arriving, and finding her out, he decided to explain the
following morning at the factory—by note, if necessary. To
make up for it he decided he might promise to accompany
her as far as Fonda on Saturday and give her her present
then.
But on Friday morning at the factory, instead of explaining
to her with the seriousness and even emotional
dissatisfaction which would have governed him before, he
now whispered: “I have to break that engagement to-night,
honey. Been invited to my uncle’s, and I have to go. And
I’m not sure that I can get around afterwards. I’ll try if I get
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through in time. But I’ll see you on the Fonda car to-morrow
if I don’t. I’ve got something I want to give you, so don’t feel
too bad. Just got word this morning or I’d have let you
know. You’re not going to feel bad, are you?” He looked at
her as gloomily as possible in order to express his own
sorrow over this.
But Roberta, her presents and her happy last evening with
him put aside in this casual way, and for the first time, too,
in this fashion, shook her head negatively, as if to say “Oh,
no,” but her spirits were heavily depressed and she fell to
wondering what this sudden desertion of her at this time
might portend. For, up to this time, Clyde had been
attentiveness itself, concealing his recent contact with
Sondra behind a veil of pretended, unmodified affection
which had, as yet, been sufficient to deceive her. It might
be true, as he said, that an unescapable invitation had
come up which necessitated all this. But, oh, the happy
evening she had planned! And now they would not be
together again for three whole days. She grieved dubiously
at the factory and in her room afterwards, thinking that
Clyde might at least have suggested coming around to her
room late, after his uncle’s dinner in order that she might
give him the presents. But his eventual excuse made this
day was that the dinner was likely to last too late. He could
not be sure. They had talked of going somewhere else
afterwards.
But meanwhile Clyde, having gone to the Trumbulls’, and
later to the Steeles’, was flattered and reassured by a
series of developments such as a month before he would
not have dreamed of anticipating. For at the Steeles’ he
was promptly introduced to a score of personalities there
who, finding him chaperoned by the Trumbulls and learning
that he was a Griffiths, as promptly invited him to affairs of
their own—or hinted at events that were to come to which
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491
he might be invited, so that at the close he found himself
with cordial invitations to attend a New Year’s dance at the
Vandams’ in Gloversville, as well as a dinner and dance
that was to be given Christmas Eve by the Harriets in
Lycurgus, an affair to which Gilbert and his sister Bella, as
well as Sondra, Bertine and others were invited.
And lastly, there was Sondra herself appearing on the
scene at about midnight in company with Scott Nicholson,
Freddie Sells and Bertine, at first pretending to be wholly
unaware of his presence, yet deigning at last to greet him
with an, “Oh, hello, I didn’t expect to find you here.” She
was draped most alluringly in a deep red Spanish shawl.
But Clyde could sense from the first that she was quite
aware of his presence, and at the first available opportunity
he drew near to her and asked yearningly, “Aren’t you going
to dance with me at all?”
“Why, of course, if you want me to. I thought maybe you
had forgotten me by now,” she said mockingly.
“As though I’d be likely to forget you. The only reason I’m
here to-night is because I thought I might see you again. I
haven’t thought of any one or anything else since I saw you
last.”
Indeed so infatuated was he with her ways and airs, that
instead of being irritated by her pretended indifference, he
was all the more attracted. And he now achieved an
intensity which to her was quite compelling. His eyelids
narrowed and his eyes lit with a blazing desire which was
quite disturbing to see.
“My, but you can say the nicest things in the nicest way
when you want to.” She was toying with a large Spanish
comb in her hair for the moment and smiling. “And you say
them just as though you meant them.”
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492
“Do you mean to say that you don’t believe me, Sondra,” he
inquired almost feverishly, this second use of her name
thrilling her now as much as it did him. Although inclined to
frown on so marked a presumption in his case, she let it
pass because it was pleasing to her.
“Oh, yes, I do. Of course,” she said a little dubiously, and for
the first time nervously, where he was concerned. She was
beginning to find it a little hard to decipher her proper line of
conduct in connection with him, whether to repress him
more or less. “But you must say now what dance you want.
I see some one coming for me.” And she held her small
program up to him archly and intriguingly. “You may have
the eleventh. That’s the next after this.”
“Is that all?”
“Well, and the fourteenth, then, greedy,” she laughed into
Clyde’s eyes, a laughing look which quite enslaved him.
Subsequently learning from Frank Harriet in the course of a
dance that Clyde had been invited to his house for
Christmas Eve, as well as that Jessica Phant had invited
him to Utica for New Year’s Eve, she at once conceived of
him as slated for real success and decided that he was
likely to prove less of a social burden than she had feared.
He was charming—there was no doubt of it. And he was so
devoted to her. In consequence, as she now decided, it
might be entirely possible that some of these other girls,
seeing him recognized by some of the best people here
and elsewhere, would become sufficiently interested, or
drawn to him even, to wish to overcome his devotion to her.
Being of a vain and presumptuous disposition herself, she
decided that that should not be. Hence, in the course of her
second dance with Clyde, she said: “You’ve been invited to
the Harriets’ for Christmas Eve, haven’t you?”
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“Yes, and I owe it all to you, too,” he exclaimed warmly.
“Are you going to be there?”
“Oh, I’m awfully sorry. I am invited and I wish now that I
was going. But you know I arranged some time ago to go
over to Albany and then up to Saratoga for the holidays. I’m
going to-morrow, but I’ll be back before New Year’s. Some
friends of Freddie’s are giving a big affair over in
Schenectady New Year’s Eve, though. And your cousin
Bella and my brother Stuart and Grant and Bertine are
going. If you’d like to go, you might go along with us over
there.”
She had been about to say “me,” but had changed it to “us.”
She was thinking that this would certainly demonstrate her
control over him to all those others, seeing that it nullified
Miss Phant’s invitation. And at once Clyde accepted, and
with delight, since it would bring him in contact with her
again.
At the same time he was astonished and almost aghast
over the fact that in this casual and yet very intimate and
definite way she was planning for him to reëncounter Bella,
who would at once carry the news of his going with her and
these others to her family. And what would not that spell,
seeing that even as yet the Griffiths had not invited him
anywhere—not even for Christmas? For although the fact of
Clyde having been picked up by Sondra in her car as well
as later, that he had been invited to the Now and Then, had
come to their ears, still nothing had been done. Gilbert
Griffiths was wroth, his father and mother puzzled as to
their proper course but remaining inactive nonetheless.
But the group, according to Sondra, might remain in
Schenectady until the following morning, a fact which she
did not trouble to explain to Clyde at first. And by now he
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494
had forgotten that Roberta, having returned from her long
stay at Biltz by then, and having been deserted by him over
Christmas, would most assuredly be expecting him to
spend New Year’s Eve with her. That was a complication
which was to dawn later. Now he only saw bliss in Sondra’s
thought of him and at once eagerly and enthusiastically