Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/282

 knees and said rather wistfully, 'I have now come to a place many girls reach in life, I believe, and never in stories. Would I rather not marry—or marry some one whom I care ever so much about and who understands me, but doesn't simply carry me off my feet?'

'You are referring, I suppose, to Professor Ripley. But you just said that he did not want to marry you. Are you such a hussy as to use tricks to force him into an unwelcome union? Oh, no wonder men scorn our moral sense!' She added as a triumphal afterthought: 'And then, you told me that you once tried to make him declare himself out on some moor last summer. Are you now more skilful, or is he more gullible? You simply have a low feminine desire to force him to propose so that you may'—Pauline waved her rusty arm in imitation of Lanice's graceful genture—'turn him down, and say with a shrug you can get a better one.'

'No,' said Lanice with a sudden angry defiance, 'there is no better...' She stopped, surprised that she had said so much. 'I think he is the best man in the world. At first I only saw him as a—a background for Anthony. And then in England, and since then in Boston, I've come to like him more and more. Now...I like him the best of any man I've ever known...I like him so much that I really, in a way, love him.'

'Indeed!'

'There are so many different ways of falling in love—'