The Charm School
"Has she ever said she loved you?"
He was silent. She hadn't. She had said she liked him better than any one else—even David, for, of course, David was in love with her, too; she had told him he never bored her, and he knew, though he could not admit it even to himself, that when they went about together she enjoyed the sensation his appearance always made. She had written him quantities of the nicest notes—Susie could write the pleasantest notes, in the neatest little hand—and, since it had been clearly understood between them that he always came on Thursdays, she had been wonderfully kind in never allowing any one to interfere with him. But he could not feel that all these taken together indicated a great passion, and now, with Mrs. Rolles's cold eye upon him, they seemed particularly paltry.
He had met Susie five years before when, as a girl of sixteen, she had come to his senior dance at the invitation of David Stewart. He had thought her a lovely, fairy-like being and had danced with her as many times in the evening as he could. Two years later, when she came out, he had found a snap-shot of her in a newspaper and had cut it out and carried it in his pocket-
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