“Well, stay here then,” she said with a voice that comforted me. “Why can’t you go home?”
“I can’t. There’s something waiting for me there. No, I can’t—it’s too frightful.”
“Let it wait then and stay here. First wipe your glasses. You can see nothing like that. Give me your handkerchief. What shall we drink? Burgundy?”
While she wiped my glasses, I had the first clear impression of her pale, firm face, with its clear grey eyes and smooth forehead, and the short, tight curl in front of her ear. Good-naturedly and with a touch of mockery she began to take me in hand. She ordered the wine, and as she clinked her glass with mine, her eyes fell on my shoes.
“Good Lord, wherever have you come from? You look as though you had come from Paris on foot. That’s no state to come to a dance in.”
I answered “yes” and “no,” laughed now and then, and let her talk. I found her charming, very much to my surprise, for I had always avoided girls of her kind and regarded them with suspicion. And she treated me exactly in the way that was best for me at that moment, and so she has since without an exception. She took me under her wing just as I needed, and mocked me, too, just as I needed. She ordered me a sandwich and told me to eat it. She filled my glass and bade me sip it and not drink too fast. Then she commended my docility.
“That’s fine,” she said to encourage me. “You’re not difficult. I wouldn’t mind betting it’s a long while since you have had to obey anyone.”
“You’d win the bet. How did you know it?”
“Nothing in that. Obeying is like eating and drinking. There’s nothing like it if you’ve been without it too long. Isn’t it so, you’re glad to do as I tell you?”