Esther is also direct (and practical) with Buddy when she asks him if he's ever had an affair. He tells her the story of his affair with Gladys, the waitress, and Esther is quite shocked at how many times Buddy slept with the waitress during the summer when he was a busboy on the Cape. Because Esther knows so little about sex, or about relationships between men and women, she asks the other girls at school about this "other woman." They all respond that "men are like that," and they imply that Esther should "just accept it." Esther can't stand the double standard of the world, and she is angry because Buddy treats her as if she is so sexy and then acts so pure himself. Significantly, Esther recounts all this to the reader before she goes out on a date with Constantin. Remember that one of her motivations for dating him is to try to have sex with someone so that she and Buddy "will be even." Yet on the other hand, after Buddy goes to the Adirondacks for the tuberculosis cure, Esther uses him as an excuse to stay in her room and study. So we see that her behavior during her summer in New York is somewhat different from her previous semester in college. Now, she seems to feel a need to grow up — to have an affair — as well as try to come to grips with the "real" professional world of the city.
On her date with Constantin, Esther again has mixed feelings. She thinks that he's too short but still "sort of handsome." She also says that he has intuition, a quality that she thinks that most American men lack. He drives her away in a green convertible, and she feels happier than when she was nine and ran with her father on the beach. It is now (Chapter 7) that we learn that Esther thinks that she was only happy until she was nine years old. She's had all kinds of lessons since then — dance, art, and music — and she's been to college, but she's never been happy, apparently, since her father died.
