"I won't laugh any more. I'm not laughing now, am I?"
"You did."
"Oh, don't be so darned feminine."
Her lips curled slightly.
"I'll be anything I want."
Amory kept his temper with difficulty. He became aware that he had not an ounce of real affection for Isabelle, but her coldness piqued him. He wanted to kiss her, kiss her a lot, because then he knew he could leave in the morning and not care. On the contrary, if he didn't kiss her, it would worry him.... It would interfere vaguely with his idea of himself as a conqueror. It wasn't dignified to come off second best, pleading, with a doughty warrior like Isabelle.
Perhaps she suspected this. At any rate, Amory watched the night that should have been the consummation of romance glide by with great moths overhead and the heavy fragrance of roadside gardens, but without those broken words, those little sighs....
Afterward they suppered on ginger ale and devil's food in the pantry, and Amory announced a decision.
"I'm leaving early in the morning."
"Why?"
"Why not?" he countered.
"There's no need."
"However, I'm going."
"Well, if you insist on being ridiculous--"
"Oh, don't put it that way," he objected.
"--just because I won't let you kiss me. Do you think--"
"Now, Isabelle," he interrupted, "you know it's not that--even suppose it is. We've reached the stage where we either ought to kiss--or--or--nothing. It isn't as if you were refusing on moral grounds."
She hesitated.
"I really don't know what to think about you," she began, in a feeble, perverse attempt at conciliation. "You're so funny."
"How?"
"Well, I thought you had a lot of self-confidence and all that; remember you told me the other day that you could do anything you wanted, or get anything you wanted?"
Amory flushed. He had told her a lot of things.
"Yes."
"Well, you didn't seem to feel so self-confident to-night. Maybe you're just plain conceited."
"No, I'm not," he hesitated. "At Princeton--"
"Oh, you and Princeton! You'd think that was the world, the way you talk! Perhaps you can write better than anybody else on your old Princetonian; maybe the freshmen do think you're important--"
"You don't understand--"
"Yes, I do," she interrupted. "I do, because you're always talking about yourself and I used to like it; now I don't."