I'm not clever." Geraldine reddened.
"I don't usually talk about nothing." "I do," he said.

"I never have much to say." "Is that because you don't like debutantes ?" she asked coldly.
"It's because they don't care about me....

If you would talk to me, I'd really be grateful." He flushed and stepped back awkwardly to allow room for a slim, handsome man to pass between them.

The very ornamental man did not pass, however, but calmly turned toward Geraldine, and began to talk to her.
She presently discovered his name to be Dysart; and she also discovered that Mr.Dysart didn't know her name; and, for a moment after she had told him, surprise and a confused sense of resentment silenced her, because she was quite certain now that they had never been properly presented.
That negligence of conventions was not unusual in this new world she was entering, she had already noticed; and this incident was evidently another example of custom smilingly ignored.

She looked up questioningly, and Dysart, instantly divining the trouble, laughed in his easy, attractive fashion--the fashion he usually affected with women.
"You seemed so fresh and cool and sweet all alone in this hot corner that I simply couldn't help coming over to hear whether your voice matched the ensemble.