An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [180]
As he said this there came to him the thought of what Roberta would think if she could hear him. “But what a question,” he continued a little nervously now. “You like to tease, don’t you?”
“Who, me? Oh, no. I wouldn’t do anything like that. But I’m sure you have just the same. I like to ask questions sometimes, just to see what people will say when they don’t want you to know what they really think.” She beamed into Clyde’s eyes amusedly and defiantly. “But I know you have a girl just the same. All good-looking fellows have.”
“Oh, am I good-looking?” he beamed nervously, amused and yet pleased. “Who said so?”
“As though you didn’t know. Well, different people. I for one. And Sondra Finchley thinks you’re good-looking, too. She’s only interested in men who are. So does my sister Jill, for that matter. And she only likes men who are good-looking. I’m different because I’m not so good-looking myself.” She blinked cynically and teasingly into his eyes, which caused him to feel oddly out of place, not able to cope with such a girl at all, at the same time very much flattered and amused. “But don’t you think you’re better looking than your cousin,” she went on sharply and even commandingly. “Some people think you are.”
Although a little staggered and yet flattered by this question which propounded what he might have liked to believe, and although intrigued by this girl’s interest in him, still Clyde would not have dreamed of venturing any such assertion even though he had believed it. Too vividly it brought the aggressive and determined and even at times revengeful-looking features of Gilbert before him, who, stirred by such a report as this, would not hesitate to pay him out.
“Why, I don’t think anything of the kind,” he laughed. “Honest, I don’t. Of course I don’t.”
“Oh, well, then maybe you don’t, but you are just the same. But that won’t help you much either, unless you have money—that is, if you want to run with people who have.” She looked up at him and added quite blandly. “People like money even more than they do looks.”
What a sharp girl this was, he thought, and what a hard, cold statement. It cut him not a little, even though she had not intended that it should.
But just then Sondra herself entered with some youth whom Clyde did not know—a tall, gangling, but very smartly-dressed individual. And after them, along with others, Bertine and Stuart Finchley.
“Here she is now,” added Gertrude a little spitefully, for she resented the fact that Sondra was so much better-looking than either she or her sister, and that she had expressed an interest in Clyde. “She’ll be looking to see if you notice how pretty she looks, so don’t disappoint her.”
The impact of this remark, a reflection of the exact truth, was not necessary to cause Clyde to gaze attentively, and even eagerly. For apart from her local position and means and taste in dress and manners, Sondra was of the exact order and spirit that most intrigued him—a somewhat refined (and because of means and position showered upon her) less savage, although scarcely less self-centered, Hortense Briggs. She was, in her small, intense way, a seeking Aphrodite, eager to prove to any who were sufficiently attractive the destroying power of her charm, while at the same time retaining her own personality and individuality free of any entangling alliance or compromise. However, for varying reasons which she could not quite explain to herself, Clyde appealed to her. He might not be anything socially or financially, but he was interesting to her.
Hence she was now keen, first to see if he were present, next to be sure that he gained no hint that she had seen him first, and lastly to act as grandly as possible for his benefit—a Hortensian procedure and type of thought that was exactly the thing best calculated to impress him. He gazed and there she was—tripping here and there in a filmy chiffon dance frock, shaded from palest yellow to deepest orange, which most enhanced her dark eyes and hair. And having exchanged a dozen or more “