That, I felt, was the weakness of my position; I not only hadn't made any objection, I hadn't felt any shame; the annoyance, the hurt of outraged maidenliness, whatever was the traditional attitude, hadn't come. Inwardly I burned with the woods afire, the red west, the white star like a torch that came out above it. On the way home Helmeth Garrett rode with us as far as the main road and was particularly attentive to Pauline and Flora Haines. I remember it came to me dimly that there was something designedly protective in this; there was more or less veiled innuendo flying about which failed to get through to me. Pauline put it quite plainly for me when she came to talk things over the day after the picnic. She was sympathetic. "Oh, my dear, it must be dreadful for you," she cooed; "a perfect stranger, and getting you talked about that way!" "So I am talked about?" "My _dear_, what could you expect? And in plain sight of us. If you had only pushed him away, or something." "I couldn't," I said, "I was so ... astonished." In the night I had found myself explaining to Pauline how this affair of Helmeth Garrett had differed importantly from all similar instances; now I saw its shining surfaces dimmed with comment like unwiped glass. "That's just what I _said_!" Pauline was pleased with herself. "I told Belle Endsleigh you weren't used to that sort of thing ... you were _completely_ overcome. But of course he wasn't really a gentleman or he wouldn't have done it." I do not know why at this moment it occurred to me that probably Henry Mills hadn't proposed to Pauline after all, but before I could frame a discreet question she was off in another direction. "What will Tommy Bettersworth say?" "Why, what has he got to do with it?" "O-_liv_-ia! After the way you've encouraged him...." "You mean because I went to the picnic with him? Well, what can he do about it?" Pauline gave me up with a gesture. "Tommy is the soul of chivalry," she said, "and anybody can see he is crazy about you, simply crazy." What I really wanted was that she should go on talking about Helmeth Garrett. I wanted ground for putting to her that since all we had been sedulously taught about kissing and all "that sort of thing"--that it was horrid, cheapening, insufferable--had failed to establish itself, had in fact come as a sword, divining mystery, it couldn't be dealt with on the accepted Taylorville basis. I felt the quality of achievement in Helmeth Garrett's right to kiss me, a right which I was sure he lacked only the occasion to establish. But when the occasion came it went all awry.