“Yes,” Ariel agreed. “I do know. Loving a person doesn’t mean wanting to change them, even if changing them would only mean their being able to love you better. You love them because they are the way they are....”
“Yes. And listen.—The last two days of vacation here, Prescott was different. Toward me, I mean. If he could manage it, he wasn’t alone with me. He’d stick around Glenn or you, or Mother. Any one! And he went for one walk all alone. Pretended he didn’t know I was waiting for him with my things on in the library. Just slipped out without my knowledge.
“I thought it was you that had changed him, Ariel. Imagine! But then he did keep saying how graceful you are and what lovely hair you’ve got. And that last morning when he went to sleep in the library—remember? That morning I was _sure_ that he was crazy about you.
“I was pretty dumb not to see that it was Joan Nevin all the time, from the first minute he saw her!
“When he got back to New Haven, after his visit here, he didn’t write. He’d written every day for months. I nearly went insane watching for mail. I wrote him at first, pretending everything was the same. But when he wouldn’t answer, I began calling him up on long distance. He was always out—they said. I sent telegrams too. I hadn’t any pride. Or I’d have it one hour, decide I’d let eternal silence on my part show him how indifferent I was, and the next _minute_, almost, I was calling long distance again. It was wild, but I didn’t seem to have any will. Then, to-day, I couldn’t stand it. I _had_ to see him if he was never going to answer the telephone, never write. So I cut all my classes and went to New Haven. I’d gone to classes right along. Even studied. Patty never guessed anything, right in the room with me! I didn’t cry, not once. Till you came in just now.
“I went right from the train to Prescott’s dorm. And I met him coming out of the street door. I had meant to go right up to his room, unless somebody stopped me. But there he was—like Fate. He took me away from the college into the town to an awful, dirty little eating place, miles away. It seemed miles. And all the time he talked. He said I was crazy and he despised me for chasing him like that. He’d made love to dozens of girls and got through with them. But not one of them had ever done a crazy thing like coming to his dormitory and trying to throw a scene. Girls of my sort understood how much necking meant with a man, and _how little_. If they didn’t, he’d written a book, to help them to, hadn’t he! If a man of his sort wanted something more serious than necking, he didn’t usually take it with the sisters of his best friends. Or with my kind of girl at all. He thought I’d understood that. I’d pretended to understand, he said.