An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [187]
“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 tonight 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.”
“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?”
“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 tomorrow, 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 reencounter 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