"
He followed Mrs. Van Vleck's leads in conversation, and once responded
with crisp cleverness to a gay remark addressed to him by a girl across
the table. But he seemed to take it for granted that Miss Howland
would be occupied with Oddington; and in fact he had spoken to her but
once, and then to thank her when she pushed a dish of almonds toward
him.
The girl had noted a similar tendency of late on the part of other men,
but had thought of it only in as far as it had impressed upon her the
fact that she and Ralph had grown to understand each other rather well
and were very good friends. She had arrived at that age where she had
begun to feel that perhaps, after all, this might be what the world
called love and that women who attributed to the word emotions deeper,
more absorbing, more thrilling, were mere sentimentalists, who derived
their plans and ideas from a world of dreams or from fiction both
classical and popular; or else they were women of deeper feeling than
she knew herself to be.
It was all a problem. She had reason to feel that a time was
approaching when Oddington might reasonably expect a clearer,
better-defined relation. Whether she would be willing to grant this
was another matter. It was possible she might; it was possible she
might not.
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