"We
love them like brothers, and that is a proof that we are not snobbish,
for most of them are not of your or Mr. Gwynne's class--just middle-class
business people at home."
"Well, you are a business nation, so why not? I have met hardly any but
business men out here and I feel quite at home with them. My mother's
family are in trade and I enjoy myself immensely when I visit them."
"Oh!" His halo slipped....Still, what did it matter? "I suppose you told
me that to let me know you didn't need to come out here in search of an
heiress. But many of our most charming girls are not. Just now it seems to
me that more young men in California have money than girls...but they are
so uninteresting."
She looked pathetic, her mouth drooped; then she smiled at him confidingly.
He knew quite as well as if he had not been hard hit that she was flirting
with him, but as long as she gave him his chance to win her she might do
her transparent little best to make a fool of him.
"Have you ever been in love?" asked Alexina softly.
"Oh, about half-way several times, but always drew back in time...knew it
wasn't the real thing...Youth fools itself, you know, for the sake of the
sensation--or the race. Have you?"
"Oh--" Alexina lifted her thin flexible shoulders airily and this time her
color did not flow. "How is one to tell...a girl in her first season...when
all men look so much alike? It is fun to flirt with them, when you have
been shut up in boarding-school and hardly had a glimpse of life even in
vacation.
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