The Art of Strategic Flirtation — Alice Adams

Walking home with Arthur Russell, Alice feels the tobacco in her pocket like an accusation while her mouth invents cigars for her ill father. She tells herself Russell is Mildred's reserved property and she is no claim-jumper, yet habit turns her vivacity up automatically. They banter about clerks and Spanish countesses; she performs a few bars of La Paloma and discovers he is delighted by her quickness. When Russell mentions finding Walter, Alice reframes the dice game as research for future literary darky stories, converting family shame into bohemian eccentricity. She contrasts herself with perfectly perfect Mildred, admits girls play petty tricks, quotes Juliet on the sidewalk, and lets shoulder brush shoulder while warning gentlemen to beware. Russell asks to come in; she refuses now but invites him any evening soon, then watches from lace curtains as he walks away exhilarated. The sparkle drops the instant the door closes; she tells her mother Russell walked her home and adds, thoughtfully, that he did not seem terribly like an engaged man. She runs upstairs, fills her father's pipe, and pets him while he lights it, as if domestic tenderness could balance the gamble she has just taken on the sidewalk. Tarkington shows flirtation as labor: Alice is not yet personally interested, but she is already strategically authentic, exhausted, and edging toward territory Mildred considers staked.