the contrast,—how beastly unfair,—was in his favor. It made him suddenly very, very fond of Sophie,—fond over and above the delirious assurance of being in love, that state so long held in prospect, that had nothing really to do with fondness.
"A penny for them," said Sophie.
He was startled. How strange to be as intimate as this, and yet to be obliged to be careful, more careful than before. Was it ever humanly possible to know anybody well enough to say everything? He gave her a smile to put her off. "I wasn't thinking at all, Sophie dear. I'm never going to think at all again; I finished school today. That's what we're celebrating."
"Oh!"
He hated himself for his amateurishness, and he was dismayed at the implication of what he had said, for in a psychology course he had learned that Truth often chooses an inadvertent moment, indeed prefers them. Here he was, steeping and cooking in the heat of passion, fairly living in terms of Sophie Scantleberry, yet he could speak of this excursion as the celebration of something that did not include her. Was this intoxicating adventure, after all, merely his old egoism in a new guise?
"Let's not pay any attention to words today," he pleaded. "They're so hopelessly in the habit of saying what isn't meant. Let's just be—I be and you be. That's enough, isn't it?"
