As for Helen White, she also had come to a period of change. What George felt, she in her young woman`s way felt also. She was no longer a girl and hungered to reach into the grace and beauty of womanhood. She had come home from Cleveland, where she was attending college, to spend a day at the Fair. She also had begun to have memories. During the day she sat in the grand-stand with a young man, one of the instructors from the college, who was a guest of her mother`s. The young man was of a pedantic turn of mind and she felt at once he would not do for her purpose.
Former schoolmates
At the Fair she was glad to be seen in his company as he was well dressed and a stranger. She knew that the fact of his presence would create an impression. During the day she was happy, but when night came on she began to grow restless. She wanted to drive the instructor away, to get out of his presence. While they sat together in the grand-stand and while the eyes of former schoolmates were upon them, she paid so much attention to her escort that he grew interested. “A scholar needs money. I should marry a woman with money,” he mused.
Helen White was thinking of George Willard even as he wandered gloomily through the crowds thinking of her. She remembered the summer evening when they had walked together and wanted to walk with him again. She thought that the months she had spent in the city, the going to theaters and the seeing of great crowds wandering in lighted thoroughfares, had changed her profoundly. She wanted him to feel and be conscious of the change in her nature.
The summer evening together that had left its mark on the memory of both the young man and woman had, when looked at quite sensibly, been rather stupidly spent. They had walked out of town along a country road. Then they had stopped by a fence near a field of young com and George had taken off his coat and let it hang on his arm. “Well, I`ve stayed here in Winesburg yes I`ve not yet gone away but I`m growing up,” he had said. “I`ve been reading books and I`ve been thinking. I`m going to try to amount to something in life.
“Well,” he explained, “that isn`t the point. Perhaps I`d better quit talking.”
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