"Gracious! Aren't you the clever boy. I declare! Engaged to Aubrey!
Heavens, I'd like to know where you heard that."
"A little bird told me."
"It did not."
"Yes it did."
"You know better than that, George Basine. I wish you'd tell me really."
"Why should I."
"I'd like to know, that's why. I think I have a right to know."
"Oh but I did tell you something. I told you I love you."
"Why, George Basine!"
During the talk Basine had moved her closer to him. His arms were tightly around her and he had kissed her eyes and cheeks between his questions and answers. The embrace had aroused no physical desire in him. He was irritated by the coolness of his nerves. He was irritated at his being unable to feel anything with his arms around a pretty girl.
Usually the incident would have reached its climax with the half kiss he placed on her mouth. That was as far as good girls went. At this point they ordinarily said something like, "Listen, I want to tell you something. I almost forgot." And gently detaching themselves from one's arms, continued to talk in the same tone they had used during the embrace about some event that had occurred during the week.
And then one returned to the sitting room and went on talking casually as if nothing had happened. It was the height of bad taste to remind a good girl today that one had kissed her yesterday or to presume upon it in any way. It was the height of bad taste also to resist when they gently pushed one away and said, "Listen, I want to tell you something.
I almost forgot."
Basine knew the simple technique of these virginal intrigues.
Henrietta's hands were pressing him. This was the signal to release her and pretend that nothing had happened. Ordinarily Basine would have complied. He had no interest in the girl. His original impulse to take her from Aubrey had slipped from his mind.
But he had grown sad. The mild sensual moment he would usually have experienced in the embrace had been missing. His tired nerves had not responded. Unable to exhilarate his senses he sought to make up for the failure by treating his vanity to an exhilaration. This exhilaration would come if the girl he was holding grew suddenly sad, raised wide eyes to him and in a shamed voice murmured, "I love you, George. Oh, I love you so."
He would make her do this.
"Oh, Henny. Why don't you love me? I want you so much all the time."
"Why George Basine!"
She had suspected something different about the game when it started.
And this was different. Even with Aubrey it had not been as different as this. Aubrey's mother and her father had decided upon the engagement after Aubrey had been fussing her for a few weeks.
But this was different. George Basine was in love with her! She had always liked him because her father said he was a fine, promising young man and because he knew how to play, and was really like herself in many ways. She wondered what she should do. She felt worried because she was afraid she would say something that wasn't right.
She couldn't ask him to let her go because he was only holding her lightly and she could move away if she wanted to. She thought his eyes were sad and she felt suddenly sorry for him. He had stopped talking and his eyes were sad. They were looking at her and they made her feel sad, too. Things were so different when one felt sad. Everything seemed to go away then and nothing remained. Everything went away and left one a little frightened. As if the world were unreal and everybody was unreal and nothing really was.
She was frightened like that now. Or at least she thought it was fear.
Then she saw it was something else. Her heart had started to pound hard and her throat fluttered inside. No one had ever looked at her like this. So seriously. As if she were somebody very serious. It made her feel strange. She grew dizzy and her arms felt weak. She whispered his name and his hands crept over her cheeks. This thrilled her as if there were electricity in his fingers. And frightened her again. But it was nice. Like being a little girl, almost a baby, and falling into an older man's arms--her father's arms. She could almost remember being a little girl and lying in her father's arms.
"Do you love me?"
She would answer this time.
"Yes," she said. "Oh George."
She hid her face against his coat. Basine was careful not to embrace her. Her "yes" had given him an inexplicable moment. He had felt himself expand under it. In her unexpected submission--he had never dreamed of such a thing ten minutes ago--she became suddenly someone who was very rare and sweet. He was still utterly oblivious of her and had it turned out to be Marion in his arms instead of Henrietta the difference would have made no change in him. The thing that was rare and sweet was the exhilaration in his senses--a purely spiritual exhilaration. He enjoyed it as one might enjoy some unforeseen and startling gift.
He grew tender. He wanted to kiss the eyes and hair of her who had given this gift to him--the thing which felt so warm in his heart and tingled so pleasantly in his thought. He must reward her somehow for having stirred in him this delicious excitement, reward her for the sweet surfeit her surrender had given his vanity. For a moment bewildered by this inner desire to express the gratitude he felt, he stood trembling.
"Oh, I love you so, my darling," he whispered. "You're so beautiful."
It was her reward for having surrendered to his unspoken demand. It was an expression of the overwhelming generosity that choked him. He found in the saying of the words a sweetness almost as keen as her surrender had afforded him. To hear himself say to someone, "I love you," was mysteriously exhilarating. The thrill that accompanied his bestowal of largesse excited him to further experiment. He was not carried away but he relished the emotions between them, the sense of having triumphed and the provoking sense of bestowing grandiose reward.
"Darling, tell me ... please tell me--will you marry me?"
"Oh George!"
"Tell me ... tell me...."
He was acting now, making his voice dramatic, pretending uncontrollable longings. She must say "Yes." He wanted her to and she must. He did not want to marry her. The thought had never occured to him. But it would be unbearable now unless she said "Yes." He must pretend and act and make the thing end by her saying "Yes."
"Oh, I can't tell you, George dear."
"You must, please...."
He had decided now finally to make her. A contest of wills. If he wanted a yes there must be a yes. Because he wanted it. His arms crushed her.
He fastened against her. He felt her resisting. There was still no desire in him. His arms were still dead. But he could brook no resistance. The fact of resistance was unimportant but the idea of being resisted fired him with a passion entirely cerebral. He would warm her into saying yes, stir her senses, make her yield and her head swim until she said yes.
"I love you. Please say it. Say yes."
Yes to what? Henrietta for an instant awoke from the confusions of the past few minutes. Her morality, training, code of life and all sat up like a wary censor and surveyed the scene. The censor nodded an affirmation. It was all right. Go ahead. With this affirmation her body took fire. The weakness she had been struggling against became a beautiful enervation--a lassitude that swept her unresistingly forward.
She had never done this before. She struggled for a moment to recall the censor--the thing that had always directed her. But she seemed to have been deserted. She was alone with sensations.
Her virginal mind was unable to identify the excitement rising in her.
She waited while his caresses grew bolder. Then in a panic, born of a dim realization, she flung her arms passionately around Basine and sobbed.
"Yes.... Yes.... Oh George.... I will...."
She felt at once that she had said it just in time--that it would have been sinful to continue another moment without promising she would marry him.
Basine released her slowly. The incident abruptly was over. He had in fact lost interest in it immediately before she had spoken. The thrill had come, developed and gone--a spiritual exaltation which he had enjoyed to the utmost.
But now it was over. His vanity, surfeited, had withdrawn from the situation. He was surprised to find himself looking at the girl with utter dispassion, as if nothing had happened.
Inwardly he was amused. Such things were amusing, in a way. Moments in which one saw oneself as an outrageous actor, doing something ridiculous. It was like that now. Absurd. But it had been pleasant.
Curious, how pleasant. However, that was over. Henrietta would of course forget about it. And he, he was prepared to return to the library and go on popping corn as if nothing had happened, absolutely nothing.
But Henrietta leaned weakly against his arm.
"Oh George, darling. Do you really love me?"
He answered out of a social respect for consistency and nothing else. He thought the question rather tactless. Of course he didn't love her and she should have known better than to ask it. It had just been a game they had played while looking for the thingumabob.