Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/18

 "Much?"

"Frightfully."

Molly shook her head. "You won't, though," she said sadly. "You'll forget all about me the minute you get back to college."

Jock thought that in all probability she was quite right, but he refrained from saying so. He replied instead, "Now don't be a little idiot—how could I?"

"Then you care a tiny bit about me," persisted Molly.

"Sure," said Jock. But his mind groaned. He was that slightly unhappy creature, a young man whom girls loved too easily and too well and much too long. He developed fragmentary fascinations, wearied of them soon, and then invariably found to his dismay that their objects clung on with a sort of feverish desperation. Like Molly now. "Then you care a tiny bit about me?"—why, good Lord, couldn't she tell that he didn't, any longer? Couldn't she have told weeks ago? Girls were so obtuse. Or were they merely stubborn, refusing to see anything which they preferred not to see?

"Let's go in," he suggested after a pause. "We've ditched three or four dances as it is, and that music is too mean to miss."

They went, walking slowly along the gravel driveway. Jock knew that Molly was hurt because he had terminated the tête-à-tête, knew without looking that her mouth would be pursed into that pout he had once thought so adorable, which now he longed to smack with the flat of his hand whenever he saw it. He kept his eyes straight ahead, and said nothing. Molly likewise said nothing. Doubtless she was ruminating on the faithlessness of man and the cruelty of life in general.