It was one of the pink evenings, dry and clear, that come in the Boston December, and they walked down the sidehill street, under the delicate tracery of the elm boughs in the face of the metallic sunset.  In the section of the Charles that the perspective of the street blocked out, the wrinkled current showed as if glazed with the hard color.  Jeff’s strong frame rejoiced in the cold with a hale pleasure when he looked round into the face of the girl beside him, with the gray film of her veil pressed softly against her red mouth by her swift advance.  Their faces were nearly on a level, as they looked into each other’s eyes, and he kept seeing the play of the veil’s edge against her lips as they talked.

“Why sha’n’t you go to Mrs. Bevidge’s Thursdays?” she asked.  “They’re very nice.”

“How do you know I’m not going?” he retorted.

“By the way you thanked her.”

“Do you advise me to go?”

“I haven’t got anything to do with it.  What do mean by that?”

“I don’t know.  Curiosity, I suppose.”

“Well, I do advise you to go,” said the girl.  Shall you be there next Thursday?”

“I?  I never go to Mrs. Bevidge’s Thursdays!”

“Touche,” said Jeff, and they both laughed.  “Can you always get in at an enemy that way?”

“Enemy?”

“Well, friend.  It’s the same thing.”

“I see,” said the girl.  “You belong to the pessimistic school of Seniors.”

“Why don’t you try to make an optimist of me?”

“Would it be worth while?”

“That isn’t for me to say.”

“Don’t be diffident!  That’s staler yet.”

“I’ll be anything you like.”

“I’m not sure you could.”  For an instant Jeff did not feel the point, and he had not the magnanimity, when he did, to own himself touched again.  Apparently, if this girl could not rattle him, she could beat him at fence, and the will to dominate her began to stir in him.  If he could have thought of any sarcasm, no matter how crushing, he would have come back at her with it.  He could not think of anything, and he walked at her side, inwardly chafing for the chance which would not come.

When they reached her door there was a young man at the lock with a latch-key, which he was not making work, for, after a bated blasphemy of his failure, he turned and twitched the bell impatiently.

Miss Lynde laughed provokingly, and he looked over his shoulder at her and at Jeff, who felt his injury increased by the disadvantage this young man put him at.  Jeff was as correctly dressed; he wore a silk hat of the last shape, and a long frock-coat; he was properly gloved and shod; his clothes fitted him, and were from the best tailor; but at sight of this young man in clothes of the same design he felt ill-dressed.  He was in like sort aware of being rudely blocked out physically, and coarsely colored as to his blond tints of hair and eye and cheek.  Even the sinister something in the young man’s look had distinction, and there was style in the signs of dissipation in his handsome face which Jeff saw with a hunger to outdo him.