Chapter V: Foreword (5)

They went to deb parties at the Ritz and Sherry's and Pierre's. They saw musical comedies and farces and plain comedies and melodramas together. They became recognized and were bowed to in most of the fashionable night clubs. They motored hither and yon in the environs of New York. They were lavishly entertained at teas and dinners and luncheons. By all ordinary standards they should have had a most enjoyable winter.

Probably Mildred was having just that. Her picture appeared in the papers with reasonable regularity. She was on whatever committees it was right to be on. She was engaged to George Banks, who was no mean catch socially, financially, and personally.

Through the eyes of the desirable young man, however, things were not so satisfactory. This girl who seemed destined to be attached to him for life fell several running broad jumps short of his ideal of womanhood. She had looks and poise and serenity--and not another visible gift. He knew by heart her answers to everything he might conceivably say to her, which discouraged him from saying anything. He knew even what she would do in any given set of circumstances, which took most of the interest out of creating sets of circumstances. She repeated herself with perfect regularity.

He knew her seven facial expressions as well as if he had had a photograph of each with a descriptive caption: Disappointment, Pleasure, Love, Annoyance, Surprise, Interest, Boredom--every one of them mild.

She danced average well, but with an indefinable sense of heaviness. She played bridge passably, but with too frequent recourse to the wide-eyed look which is supposed to excuse misplay. Her conversation was fair until you got onto her system, or until the talk slipped off the field which is covered by the society columns. Her intellectual interests were limited to an attempt to classify everything she came in contact with as either nice or vulgar.

For some men, no doubt, she would have been an ideal mate. George credited her with this possibility. The elder Bankses seemed to approve her as prospective daughter-in-law. Young men who knew her slightly congratulated George on her charms with unlimited fervor.

He was even willing to admit that the whole trouble might be the result of something wrong with his own make-up; but the main point was that there was something awfully wrong with some one. That he knew.