can't marry him. Then why spoil him for what he can have?"
"Why on earth don't you light that cigarette and stop tapping it?" she demanded in a sort of frenzy.
She got up. Herbert was too late to pull out her chair, but he did manage to open the door for her.
She went upstairs, took off her riding clothes, and lay down on the bed. She could hear across the hall the rattle of dishes on her father's tray and his voice now and then, querulously raised in protest.
"Why can't they make a decent cup of coffee? This bellywash"
"I'll have Nora make some, Henry."
"And get it an hour from now! No."
She was frantic with jealousy. Did Herbert really know that Tom had a girl, or had he made it up? Was it this Vera, the girl from Judson? If not, who was it? There had been an effort at casualness in Herbert's voice. "I happen to know he has a girl already." Well, suppose he had? What could it possibly mean to her? They had her; and they would hold on to her. She could never get away. She would end by marrying Herbert, and she knew what that would be:
"Good night, Kay."
"Good night, Herbert. Be sure to open your window."
She thought about her Aunt Bessie and Uncle Ronald, her husband. He had been a dapper little man with a hideous habit of posing before the servants, especially the women. No wonder Aunt Bessie had had what the younger crowd ribaldly called "sympathizers." She even thought about old Lucius and the occasional women who had come to the ranch. That was what loveless marriage was.
She was not as ignorant as Katherine believed. Much of those earnest and wide-eyed discoveries of sex by young writers to a world already sex-wise and sex-weary before they were fledged, had come her way. Even the unloading of degenerate sex complexes by older men and women who sold themselves for commercial purposes as cheaply in the market place as any prostitute.
