But he wasn't in a glow now. Certain small incidents had lately brought him to the belief that Cicely Hamlin lacked the pairing-off instinct so common among the young of Sunbury. She had been extra nice to him; true. But the fact stood that she was not 'going with' him. Not in the Sunbury sense of the phrase. A baffling, disturbing aura of impersonally pleasant feeling held him at a distance. So he was just a young fellow setting forth, with chocolates, to call on a girl. A girl who could be extra nice to you and then go out of her way to maintain pleasant acquaintance with the others, your rivals, your enemies. Almost as if she felt she had been a little too nice and wished to strike a balance; at least he had thought of that. A girl who had been reared strangely in foreign convents; who didn't know _The Spanish Cavalier_ or _Seeing Nellie Home_ or _Solomon Levi_, yet did know, strangely, that the principal theme in Dvorak's extremely new 'New World' symphony was derived from _Swing Low, Sweet Chariot_ (which illuminating fact had stirred Henry to buy, regardless, the complete piano score of that symphony and struggle to pick out the themes on Humphrey's piano at the rooms). A girl who had never seen De Wolf Hopper in _Wang_, or the Bostonians in _Robin Hood_, or Sothem in The Prisoner of Zenda, or Maude Adams or Ethel Barrymore or _anything_. A girl who had none of the direct, free and easy ways of the village young; you couldn't have started a rough-house with her--mussed her hair, or galloped her in the two-step. A girl who wasn't stuck up, or anything like that, who seemed actually shy at times, yet subtly repressed you, made you wish you could talk like the fellow's that had gone to Harvard. In view of these rather remarkable facts I think it really was a tribute to Cicely Hamlin that the many discussions of her as a conspicuous addition to the youngest set had boiled down to the single descriptive adjective, 'tactful.' Though the characterisation seems not altogether happy; for the word, to me, connotes something of conscious skill and management--as my Crabb put it: 'TACTFUL. See Diplomatic'--and Cicely was not, certainly not in those days, a manager. Henry, muttered softly, as he walked. 'I'll hand it to her when she comes in. 'No, she'll shake hands and it might get in the way. 'Put it on the table--that's the thing!--on a corner where she'll see it. 'Then some time when we can't think of anything to talk about, I'll say--“Thought you might like a few chocolates.” Sorta offhand. Prevent there being a lull in the conversation. 'Better begin calling her Cicely.' 'Why not? Shucks! Can't go on with “You” and “Say!” Why can't I just do it naturally? The way Herb would, or Elbow, or those fellows. '“How'd' you do, Cicely! Come on, let's take a walk.” 'No. “Good-evening, Cicely. I thought maybe you'd like to take a walk. There's a moonrise over the lake about half-past eight.” That's better.