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But with the exception of his brief encounter with Kate, he would have given almost anything not to be there.

“You don't look very happy to be here,” she said only loud enough for him to hear. She said it with a gentle smile and a sympathetic air, and he grinned, admiring her.

“How did you guess?”

“You looked like you wanted to hide your plate somewhere and run away Do you hate parties?” she asked, chatting with him easily, as the girl from Wellesley got distracted by someone else and drifted away They seemed to be standing alone in the midst of hundreds of people eddying all around them, and they were oblivious to everyone else.

“Yes, I do. Or I think I do. I've never been to one like this.” He had to admit, he was impressed.

“Neither have I,” she said honestly, but in her case it was not due to preference or lack of opportunity, but to age. But there was no way Joe could have known. She looked so relaxed and was so mature that if someone had asked, he would have guessed her to be somewhere in her early twenties and closer to his age.

“It's pretty, isn't it?” she said, glancing around and then back at him. And he smiled, it was, but he hadn't thought of it that way. All he had been thinking of since he arrived was how many people were there, how hot and crowded it was, and how many other things he would have preferred doing. And now, looking at her, he wasn't as sure the party was the total waste of time he had deemed it to be at first.

“It is pretty,” he said, as she noticed the color of his eyes.

They were the same as hers, they were a dark almost sapphire blue. “And so are you,” he said unexpectedly. There was something so direct about the compliment he had paid her, and the way he looked, that it meant more to her than all the elegant words of the dozens of young men who had been paying court to her. And although visibly ten years younger, they were far more socially adept than he. “You have beautiful eyes,” he said, fascinated by them. They were so clear and so open and so alive, and so brave. She looked as though she were afraid of nothing. They had that in common, but in very different ways. If anything, this evening was one of the few things that had frightened him. He would rather have risked his life, which he did often, than tackle a group like this. He had been there for less than an hour when he met her, and the party had already worn thin for him, and he was hoping to leave soon.