Yet it was that very night after the Thorstads had gone to bed and were sleeping in the pale light of a quiet moonlit sky, that Freda was forced to admit that it wasn’t nonsense. All along she had hated staying without her mother, who after all was her reason for being here. She had to do it, however, or else abandon the chance of getting the job as secretary to the committee. Freda herself was a little homesick under all her excitement but, steadying her, there had come letters from her father which urged her to make the most of any opportunities which might come to her, which bade her make suitable and wise friends and learn as much as she could. One or two of the young men Freda met stood out, as being more interesting than the others. Ted Smillie, because he was so attracted to her from the first, had more or less intrigued her. Barbara’s obvious dislike of the situation had forced both Ted and Freda into somewhat closer acquaintanceship than would have naturally developed, but they both worked against Barbara’s interference. There was in Ted, for all his amorousness, a real feeling for health and beauty. That drew him to Freda and her to him and there was enough in the glamour of being chosen by the most competed-for man as worthy of attention, to make Freda feel rather strongly in his favor. If he had been rude to her, as he might have been to the country guest of the Brownley’s, she would have seen him more clearly, seen his weakness, his impressionability, read the laziness of his mind, seen the signs of self-indulgence which were already beginning to show on his handsome face. She would have seen him as too “soft” of mind and body. But he was frankly at her feet and it would have taken an older head than Freda’s to analyze too clearly past that during those first few weeks. It was not the first attention she had had, of course. There were always young men who were ready to be nice to Freda in Mohawk. But much as they had liked her they had not, as she would have said, “made love to her.” Ted did that. In his own way, he was good at it and Freda was collecting experiences and naïve in spite of her power to get a perspective on her own situation. He had singled Freda out as capable of giving him a fresher thrill than any of the girls of his own “crowd.” And he had ended by being pushed a little more than he expected by his own emotions. The prospect of Freda’s return to Mohawk had annoyed him. He had felt that if she went now, it would be an incomplete experience. He wanted more than he had had. Freda had been pleasant, had been more than pleasant, been frank enough in showing how much she liked him. But he was used to more abandonment in the girls he knew--more freedom of caresses. He wasn’t quite sure how far he wanted to go and of course he had no intention of marrying anybody, certainly not Freda. But he was unsatisfied.