There was something
sleek about him, something that suggested a well-bred dog, a hound perhaps.
As he talked he leaned forward like a greyhound in pursuit of a rabbit. His
hair was carefully parted and his clothes fitted him like the skin of an
animal. He wore a diamond scarf pin. His long jaw, it seemed to her, was
always wagging. Within a few days after the receipt of his letter she
had made up her mind that she did not want him as a husband, and she was
convinced he did not want her. The whole matter of marriage had, she was
sure, been in some way suggested by her father. When she came to that
conclusion she was both angry and in an odd way touched. She did not
interpret it as fear of some sort of indiscretion on her part, but thought
that her father wanted her to marry because he wanted her to be happy. As
she sat in the darkness on the front porch of the farmhouse the voices of
the two men became indistinct. It was as though her mind went out of her
body and like a living thing journeyed over the world. Dozens of men she
had seen and had casually addressed, young fellows attending school at
Columbus and boys of the town with whom she had gone to parties and dances
when she was a young girl, came to stand before her. She saw their figures
distinctly, but remembered them at some advantageous moment of her contact
with them. At Columbus there was a young man from a town in the southern
end of the State, one of the sort that is always in love with a woman.
Pages:
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276