“I’d be very worried if you got your feet wet,” said Philip, essaying a gallantry. Too stupid! he thought. He was not very good at gallantries. He wished he wasn’t so much attracted by Molly’s rather creamy and florid beauty. He wouldn’t be here making a fool of himself if she were ugly.
“Too sweet of you,” said Molly. “Tell me,” she added, leaning toward him with offered face and bosom, “why do you like me?”
“Isn’t it fairly obvious why?” he answered.
Molly smiled. “Do you know why Jean says I’m the only woman he could ever fall in love with?”
“No,” said Philip, thinking that she was really superb in her Junonian way.
“Because,” Molly went on, “according to him, I’m the only woman who isn’t what Baudelaire calls le contraire du dandy. You remember that fragment in Mon Cœur mis à nu? ‘La femme a faim et elle veut manger; soif, et elle veut boire. La femme est naturelle, c’est-à-dire abominable. Aussi est-elle …’ ”
Philip interrupted her. “You’ve left out a sentence,” he said laughing. “Soif, et elle veut boire. And then: Elle est en rut, et elle veut être … They don’t print the word in Crépet’s edition, but I’ll supply it if you like.”
“No thanks,” said Molly, rather put out by the interruption. It had spoilt the easy unfolding of a well-tried conversational gambit. She wasn’t accustomed to people being so well up in French literature as Philip. “The word’s irrelevant.”
“Is it?” Philip raised his eyebrows. “I wonder.”
“Aussi est-elle toujours vulgaire,” Molly went on, hurrying back to the point at which she had been interrupted, “c’est-à-dire le contraire du dandy. Jean says I’m the only female dandy. What do you think?”
“I’m afraid he’s right.”
“Why ‘afraid’?”
“I don’t know that I like dandies much. Particularly female ones.” A woman who uses the shapeliness of her breasts to compel you to admire her mind—a good character, he reflected, for his novel. But trying in private life, very trying indeed. “I prefer them natural,” he added.
“But what’s the point of being natural unless you have enough art to do it well and enough consciousness to know how natural you’re being?” Molly was pleased with her question. A little polishing and it would be epigrammatically perfect. “There’s no point in being in love with a person unless you know exactly what you feel and can express it.”
“I can see a great deal of point,” said Philip. “One doesn’t have to be a botanist or a still-life painter to enjoy flowers. And equally, my dear Molly, one doesn’t have to be Sigmund Freud or Shakespeare to enjoy you.” And sliding suddenly nearer to her along the sofa, he took her in his arms and kissed her.
“But what are you thinking about?” she cried in pained astonishment.
“I’m not thinking about anything,” he answered rather angrily from the other end of the arm with which she had pushed him away from her. “Not thinking; only wanting.” He felt humiliated, made a fool of. “But I’d forgotten you were a nun.”
“I’m nothing of the kind,” she protested. “I’m merely civilized. All this pouncing and clawing—it’s really too savage.” She readjusted a water-waved lock of hair and began to talk about platonic relationships as aids to spiritual growth. The more platonic the relations between an amorous man and woman, the more intense in them the life of the conscious mind.
“What the body loses, the soul gains. Wasn’t it Paul Bourget who pointed that out in his Psychologie contemporaine? A bad novelist,” she added, finding it necessary to apologize for quoting from so very old-fashioned and disreputed an author; “but good as an essayist, I always find. Wasn’t it Paul Bourget?” she repeated.
“I should think it must have been Paul Bourget,” said Philip wearily.
“The energy which wanted to expend itself in physical passion is diverted and turns the mills of the soul.” (“Turn the mills of the soul” was perhaps a shade too romantic, Victorian, Meredithian, she felt, as she pronounced the words.) “The body’s damned and canalized,” she amended, “and made to drive the spiritual dynamos. The thwarted unconscious finds vent in making consciousness more intense.”
“But does one want one’s consciousness intensified?” asked Philip, looking angrily at the rather luscious figure at the other end of the sofa. “I’m getting a bit tired of consciousness, to tell you the truth.” He admired her body, but the only contact she would permit was with her much less interesting and beautiful mind. He wanted kisses, but all he got was analytical anecdotes and philosophic epigrams. “Thoroughly tired,” he repeated. It was no wonder.
Molly only laughed. “Don’t start pretending you’re a palaeolithic caveman,” she said. “It doesn’t suit you. Tired of consciousness, indeed! You! Why, if you’re tired of consciousness, you must be tired of yourself.”
“Which is exactly what I am,” said Philip. “You’ve made me tired of myself. Sick to death.” Still irritated, he rose to take his leave.
“Is that an insult?” she asked, looking at him. “Why have I made you tired of yourself?”
Philip shook his head. “I can’t explain. I’ve given up explaining.” He held out his hand. Still looking enquiringly into his face, Molly took it. “If you weren’t one of the vestal virgins of civilization,” he went on, “you’d understand without any explaining. Or rather, there wouldn’t be any explaining to do. Because you wouldn’t have made me feel tired of myself. And let me add, Molly, that if you were really and consistently civilized, you’d take steps to make yourself less desirable. Desirability’s barbarous. It’s as savage as pouncing and clawing. You ought to look like George Eliot. Goodbye.” And giving her hand a final shake, he limped out of the room.
In the street he gradually recovered his temper. He even began to smile to himself. For it was a joke. The spectacle of a biter being bitten is always funny, even when
