But although, after her graduation, she went out to dinners, she refused to go to parties, since that would have meant dancing, and she recoiled from contact with even these innocuous young men. Not, as she was aware, that she would have been importuned for dances, for the boys had “no use for her,” she was a “highbrow,” wasn’t a “regular girl,” “ought to have been a boy and tried to look like one.” The girls, with whom she was popular, tried to give her “points,” but desisted when they understood that her dislike of men was sincere, although they did not guess the cause. If she could have brought herself to tell the story of both her surface and her psychic life to these wise maidens, no doubt they would have blown the chaff from the wheat with their laughing common sense, told her to “forget it,” remember that youth was the only thing that mattered, and, when she had had a good time for a year or two, marry and have a baby. But Gita would rather have gone out into the breakers at the Cliff House and drowned herself than to have revealed the festering sores in her soul to anyone. And no less than three noxious experiences with married men, fascinated by her vivid youth and intolerance of their sex, extinguished any possibility she may have unconsciously cherished of forgetting the past. Upon one occasion only did she appear to attract a “boy.” He had made an average record in the war, was the son of a rich man, and although he “played about” with the girls he “fell for” none of them. The other young men disliked and criticized him, but the girls retorted that he was too good a dancer and mah-jongg player to lose. One night he met Gita at a dinner, and more than once she saw him watching her with covert speculation. Later, with considerable finesse for a San Francisco youth, he lured her into the conservatory, and after telling her admiringly that she looked the real thing and made chromos of the other dear little daisies, seized her in his arms and tried to kiss her. He received an abraded shin, a scratch across his cheek, and a loosened front tooth, which sent him cursing out of her presence to find an exit at the back of the house. They met some weeks later and he said airily: “My mistake. Sorry. Hope you’ll forget it.” But she knew that he hated her and looked exultingly at the gold band across his front teeth.