“No,” she replied and looked down. “No; God knows it wasn’t. I didn’t even think about it.”
“Listen,” said I; “you are evidently sitting here labouring under the delusion that I can dress and live exactly as I choose, aren’t you? And that is just what I can’t do; I am very, very poor.”
She looked at me. “Are you?” she queried.
“Yes, worse luck, I am.”
After an interval.
“Well, gracious, so am I, too,” she said, with a cheerful movement of her head.
Every one of her words intoxicated me, fell on my heart like drops of wine. She enchanted me with the trick she had of putting her head a little on one side, and listening when I said anything, and I could feel her breath brush my face.
“Do you know,” I said, “that … but, now, you mustn’t get angry—when I went to bed last night I settled this arm for you … so … as if you lay on it … and then I went to sleep.”
“Did you? That was lovely!” A pause. “But of course it could only be from a distance that you would venture to do such a thing, for otherwise …”
“Don’t you believe I could do it otherwise?”
“No, I don’t believe it.”
“Ah, from me you may expect everything,” I said, and I put my arm around her waist.
“Can I?” was all she said.
It annoyed me, almost wounded me, that she should look upon me as being so utterly inoffensive. I braced myself up, steeled my heart, and seized her hand; but she withdrew it softly, and moved a little away from me. That just put an end to my courage again; I felt ashamed, and looked out through the window. I was, in spite of all, in far too wretched a condition; I must, above all, not try to imagine myself anyone in particular. It would have been another matter if I had met her during the time that I still looked like a respectable human being—in my old, well-off days when I had sufficient to make an appearance; and I felt fearfully downcast!
“There now, one can see!” she said, “now one can just see one can snub you with just the tiniest frown—make you look sheepish by just moving a little away from you” … she laughed, tantalisingly, roguishly, with tightly-closed eyes, as if she could not stand being looked at, either.
“Well, upon my soul!” I blurted out, “now you shall just see,” and I flung my arms violently around her shoulder. I was mortified. Was the girl out of her senses? Did she think I was totally inexperienced! Ha! Then I would, by the living … No one should say of me that I was backward on that score. The creature was possessed by the devil himself! If it were only a matter of going at it, well …
She sat quite quietly, and still kept her eyes closed; neither of us spoke. I crushed her fiercely to me, pressed her body greedily against my breast, and she spoke never a word. I heard her heart’s beat, both hers and mine; they sounded like hurrying hoof-beats.
I kissed her.
I no longer knew myself. I uttered some nonsense, that she laughed at, whispered pet names into her mouth, caressed her cheek, kissed her many times. I undid a couple of buttons in her bodice and I caught a glimpse of her breasts inside—white rounded breasts, that peeped out like two sweet wonders behind her linen.
“May I see?” I say, and I try to undo more buttons to make the opening wider, but my movements are too rough, I make no way with the lower buttons; besides, the bodice tightened there.
“May I just see a little … a little?”
She winds her arms about my neck, quite slowly, tenderly, the breath of her pink quivering nostrils fans me right in the face; with one hand she begins herself to undo the buttons one by one. She laughs embarrassedly, laughs shortly, and looks up at me several times, to see if I notice that she is afraid. She loosens strings, unclasps her stays, is fascinated and frightened—and I finger with my clumsy hands at these buttons and strings. …
To divert my attention from what she is doing, she strokes down my shoulders with her left hand, and says, “What a lot of loose hair there is.”
“Yes,” I reply, and I try to penetrate into her breast with my mouth. She is lying at this moment with completely loosened clothes. Suddenly, as if she changes her mind, as if she thinks she has gone too far, she covers herself again and rises up a little, and, to hide her confusion at the state of her clothes, she begins to remark anew on the mass of loose hair that covers my shoulders.
“What can be the reason that your hair falls out so?”
“Don’t know.”
“Ah, of course, because you drink too much, and perhaps … fie, I won’t say it. You ought to be ashamed. No, I wouldn’t have believed that of you! To think that you, who are so young, already should lose your hair! Now, do please just tell me what sort of way you really spend you life—I am certain it is dreadful! But only the truth, do you hear; no evasions. Anyway, I shall see by you if you hide anything—there, tell now!”
“Yes; but let me kiss you on your breast first, then.”
“Are you mad? Well, begin now.”
“No, dear; do give me leave, now, to do that first.”
“Humph, no; not first; … maybe afterwards. … I want to hear what kind of a man you are. … Ah, I am sure it is dreadful.”
It hurt me that she should believe the worst of me; I was afraid of thrusting her away entirely, and I could not endure the misgivings she had as to my way of life. I would clear myself in her eyes, make myself worthy of her, show her that she was sitting at the side of a person almost angelically disposed. Why, bless me, I could count
