Allan confided to Joy afterward that Gail's shoulder-straps
worried him to madness.
Joy watched Miss Maddox with fascinated eyes. "I'm so _young_!"
she thought forlornly, "and all the rest of them are so dreadfully
grown-up!"
She felt as if Gail Maddox, with her brilliant, careless sentences,
and her half-insolent confidence, owned everybody there much more
than _she_ did: and she felt little and underdressed and outclassed
to a point where even Gail might pity her, and probably did.... And
if there is a more abjectly awful feeling than that the Other Girl
pities you, nobody has discovered it yet.... Gail might even know how
much of a pretender she was. If John--but no. John wasn't like that.
He was--"fantastically honorable," she had heard Phyllis call it.
John hadn't told--he wouldn't tell if his own happiness depended
on it.... And Joy let her thoughts stray off into a maze of wondering
as to whether she would rather have her self-respect saved by not
having Gail know, or whether, if it would break John's heart to be
separated forever from Gail, she oughtn't to tell him to tell.
Gail, lounging in a low chair she had dragged across the waxed floor
in the face of all outcries, with one electric-blue-shod foot
stretched out before her, looked exactly the person you'd care least
to have know anything they could scorn you about. She could scorn so
well and so convincingly, Joy felt, listening to her.
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