Didactic fiction; Political fiction; Social problems -- Fiction
Harry felt the change in her and was raging. All the quasi-tenderness
he had felt for her earlier in the evening had gone. He wanted to break
her. He cursed himself for the time he had wasted that evening. She
would have gone anywhere with him a half hour before. His distorted
brain was torn by strange emotions. Yetta had caught hold of the inner
fabric of his imagination as no other girl had ever done. And, as is
just as true of cadets as of other men, when they begin to care, they
lose their _sang-froid_. He was suddenly afraid of losing her. He felt
himself awkward.
His lack of ease was intensified by his strange surroundings. He had
never been to a ball like this. He only knew two kinds: the flashy,
vicious dances, organized by his own class, the kind he was planning to
take Yetta to, and "Greenhorn balls"--sordid but equally vicious--in the
back rooms of low-class saloons, patronized by ignorant, newly arrived
immigrants.
The entry to the Lyceum Hall was packed with poorly dressed people, but
they were not greenhorns. The women were the strangest of all to him.
Their kind did not come to the balls he frequented. More than half of
them wore shawls; they were of all ages, from fifteen to seventy. They
were serious-eyed working women, and many of them looked hungry. He felt
that his foppish clothes were conspicuous. He felt hostility in the
stares of the men. He would have given anything to be among his own
kind, on familiar ground.
Indeed he was conspicuous among that roomful of poorly dressed men. He
attracted the attention of a couple who stood near the door, Mabel
Train and Walter Longman. In a way they were as conspicuous as he, but
the curious glances which turned in their direction were not hostile.
Miss Train was secretary of the Woman's Trade Union League. Many of the
women and girls, as they entered the room, rushed up to greet her. She
was about twenty-seven, tall and slender. In reality her body was an
almost perfect instrument. She was never sick, and rarely unpleasantly
tired, but in looking at her one was more impressed with nervous than
physical energy. She was more graceful than beautiful. Her face was too
small, a fault which was emphasized by her great mass of brown hair. But
her diminutive mouth was strong in line. Her eyes were keenly alive and
unafraid.
Longman was over thirty, big of bone and limb. Although he strongly
resembled a tame bear, he was a likable-looking man. And just as it
surprised people to find that Miss Train was a hardy horsewoman, and
could tire most men at skiing or swimming, so every one wanted to laugh
when they were told that this lumbering giant, Longman, was an
Instructor of Assyriology at Columbia.
"Look," she said as her eyes fell on Harry and Yetta, "he's a cadet."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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