For a long time she had thought of George Snow who preferred tennis to girls and before that, Fellowes Moore, until he liked her back. Last summer she’d liked Jimmie Weld, but when the fall came he looked different back in Boston. There were the boys who came to call. Bayard Clark with his floating upper lip asked himself to dinner, and wheezing Reed Wheeler stopped in to relate his latest ailment. The Cunningham boys used to come with Marian Lockwood till she broke with Chip, stopping their bridge games. Emmett Smith brought everyone else’s news, knowing all the families. Tommy Lattimore, with a long face like a wooden board, came whenever he could and colored pink when Lilian spoke directly to him. He was sweet, Tommy Lattimore, he read a great deal and during moments when he forgot himself would speak with eloquence on a subject he’d been studying, the Elgin Marbles or Etruscan tombs. Once Tommy Lattimore came and was surprised to see no other guests at the Eliots’, he’d been told that Emmett Smith would be there. He had a tortured cup of tea with Lilian alone, and when he left she stood at the door taking in the fall air, watching him go down the brick sidewalk and turn the corner at Marlborough. Not once during his visit had he removed his hat.

As she went over the boys in her mind she tried to get used to the idea that she’d never find a boy right for her which would be all right; she wasn’t planning on getting married. Aunt Tizzy hadn’t, and she had an interesting life, only minding it sometimes. Still, being eighteen, Lilian wouldn’t have minded having a beau.

She felt a rushing well up inside her: the outdoors made it happen. She breathed deeply to quiet it, trying to coax the feeling into a narrow stream which she might pour into a tiny cup where another might share it, but this was difficult to do. She felt as wide as the sky. And anyway was that how she was to pour herself out, in a little dribble when she felt herself to be a great wave? She held on to her laced boots, planted her chin on her knees and bore into the night. Sometimes she was amazed by the amount of feeling sloshing about inside her. If she let it out there would be a terrible flood, she thought — eddies in the parlor and waterfalls down the narrow stairs. And what would her mother make of that? It would not do.