Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/132

122 fear (her almost conviction now) that when a woman's husband goes out of town for any length of time and people begin to wonder why, all her old admirers turn tail and run, too, to avoid any possible danger of being mentioned in a scandal. Life wouldn't be worth living, Stella felt, if she had no admirers.

Riding was still popular in Milhampton that Spring; Alfred Munn was still popular. Stella grasped at his attentions eagerly, instinctively, as she would at a rope flung to her from the basket of a balloon that offered to rescue her from some unfortunate fate and carry her aloft. But the balloon of Alfred Munn's popularity in Milhampton had already begun to lose its buoyancy. It couldn't carry Stella far. Alfred Munn should have been throwing off ballast instead of taking more on. For a while, though, it lifted Stella out of the valley, and diverted her attention from its shadows. Under the excitement of Alfred Munn's attentions, Stella took heart.

Alfred Munn invited her to every dance there was at the River Club that spring. People began to talk. Women, she told Effie, began to envy. She knew of at least a dozen who would give their eyeteeth if Alfred Munn would ask them to dance with him. He really was as good as a professional. He had asked her to be his partner in one of the new fancy dances last Saturday night. They had been the only two on the floor. Everybody else had sat around and stared, and applauded afterwards! Oh, she was really managing to make quite a splash in Milhampton with Alfred Munn. At the Luncheon Club she belonged to, "the girls" had discussed