His love was a similar experience. He fell in love twice during that first year in college. Once at a prom with a girl who was related to Lefty--a rich, socially secure girl who had studied abroad and who almost patronized her cousin.
Hugo had seen her dancing, and her long, slender legs and arms had issued an almost tangible challenge to him. She had looked over Lefty's shoulder and smiled vaguely. They had met. Hugo danced with her. "I love to come to a prom," she said; "it makes me feel young again."
She ignored the obvious temptation to be coy and he appreciated that. "Twenty-one."
It seemed reasonably old to Hugo. The three years' difference in their ages had given her a pinnacle of maturity.
She nodded. Her name was Iris. Afterwards Hugo thought that it should have been Isis. Half goddess, half animal. He had never met with the vanguard of emancipated American womanhood before then. "You're the great Hugo Danner, aren't you? I've seen your picture in the sporting sections." She read sporting sections. He had never thought of a woman in that light. "But you're really much handsomer. You have more sex and masculinity and you seem more intelligent."
Then, between the dances, Lefty had come. "She? Oh, she's a sort of cousin. Flies in all the high altitudes in town. Blue Book and all that. Better look out, Hugo. She plays rough."
Both youths watched her. Long, dark hair, willowy body, high, pale forehead, thin nose, red mouth, smiling like a lewd agnostic and dancing close to her partner, enjoying even that. "Well, look out, Hugo. If she wants to play, don't let her play with your heart. Anything else is quite in the books."
She came to the stag line, ignoring a sequence of invitations, and asked him to dance. They went out on the velvet campus. "I could love you--for a little while," she said. "It's too bad you have to play football to-morrow."
She smiled remotely. "You're being disloyal." Her fan moved delicately. "But I shan't chide you. In fact, I'll stay over for the game--and I'll enjoy the anticipation--more, perhaps. But you'll have to win it--to win me. I'm not a soothing type."
"It will be easy--to win," Hugo said and she peered through the darkness with admiration, because he had made his ellipsis of the object very plain.