She
liked him because he was arrogant without being conceited, and because,
unlike the men she met about the theatre, he had a horror of being
conspicuous. What an odd, pointless story! But she had enjoyed the part
about the stocking!
After the fifth cocktail he kissed her, and between laughter and
bantering caresses and a half-stifled flare of passion they passed an
hour. At four-thirty she claimed an engagement, and going into the
bathroom she rearranged her hair. Refusing to let him order her a taxi
she stood for a moment in the doorway.
"You _will_ get married," she was insisting, "you wait and see."
Anthony was playing with an ancient tennis ball, and he bounced it
carefully on the floor several times before he answered with a soupcon
of acidity:
"You're a little idiot, Geraldine."
She smiled provokingly.
"Oh, I am, am I? Want to bet?"
"That'd be silly too."
"Oh, it would, would it? Well, I'll just bet you'll marry somebody
inside of a year."
Anthony bounced the tennis ball very hard. This was one of his handsome
days, she thought; a sort of intensity had displaced the melancholy in
his dark eyes.
"Geraldine," he said, at length, "in the first place I have no one I
want to marry; in the second place I haven't enough money to support two
people; in the third place I am entirely opposed to marriage for people
of my type; in the fourth place I have a strong distaste for even the
abstract consideration of it.
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