After which excitements Geoffrey and Ciccio went in to breakfast, which Alvina had prepared.
“You have done it all, eh?” said Ciccio, glancing round.
“Yes. I’ve made breakfast for years, now,” said Alvina.
“Not many more times here, eh?” he said, smiling significantly.
“I hope not,” said Alvina.
Ciccio sat down almost like a husband—as if it were his right.
Geoffrey was very quiet this morning. He ate his breakfast, and rose to go.
“I shall see you soon,” he said, smiling sheepishly and bowing to Alvina. Ciccio accompanied him to the street.
When Ciccio returned, Alvina was once more washing dishes.
“What time shall we go?” he said.
“We’ll catch the one train. I must see the lawyer this morning.”
“And what shall you say to him?”
“I shall tell him to sell everything—”
“And marry me?”
She started, and looked at him.
“You don’t want to marry, do you?” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Wouldn’t you rather wait, and see—”
“What?” he said.
“See if there is any money.”
He watched her steadily, and his brow darkened.
“Why?” he said.
She began to tremble.
“You’d like it better if there was money.”
A slow, sinister smile came on his mouth. His eyes never smiled, except to Geoffrey, when a flood of warm, laughing light sometimes suffused them.
“You think I should!”
“Yes. It’s true, isn’t it? You would!”
He turned his eyes aside, and looked at her hands as she washed the forks. They trembled slightly. Then he looked back at her eyes again, that were watching him large and wistful and a little accusing.
His impudent laugh came on his face.
“Yes,” he said, “it is always better if there is money.” He put his hand on her, and she winced. “But I marry you for love, you know. You know what love is—” And he put his arms round her, and laughed down into her face.
She strained away.
“But you can have love without marriage,” she said. “You know that.”
“All right! All right! Give me love, eh? I want that.”
She struggled against him.
“But not now,” she said.
She saw the light in his eyes fix determinedly, and he nodded.
“Now!” he said. “Now!”
His yellow-tawny eyes looked down into hers, alien and overbearing.
“I can’t,” she struggled. “I can’t now.”
He laughed in a sinister way: yet with a certain warmheartedness.
“Come to that big room—” he said.
Her face flew fixed into opposition.
“I can’t now, really,” she said grimly.
His eyes looked down at hers. Her eyes looked back at him, hard and cold and determined. They remained motionless for some seconds. Then, a stray wisp of her hair catching his attention, desire filled his heart, warm and full, obliterating his anger in the combat. For a moment he softened. He saw her hardness becoming more assertive, and he wavered in sudden dislike, and almost dropped her. Then again the desire flushed his heart, his smile became reckless of her, and he picked her right up.
“Yes,” he said. “Now.”
For a second, she struggled frenziedly. But almost instantly she recognized how much stronger he was, and she was still, mute and motionless with anger. White, and mute, and motionless, she was taken to her room. And at the back of her mind all the time she wondered at his deliberate recklessness of her. Recklessly, he had his will of her—but deliberately, and thoroughly, not rushing to the issue, but taking everything he wanted of her, progressively, and fully, leaving her stark, with nothing, nothing of herself—nothing.
When she could lie still she turned away from him, still mute. And he lay with his arms over her, motionless. Noises went on, in the street, overhead in the workroom. But theirs was complete silence.
At last he rose and looked at her.
“Love is a fine thing, Allaye,” he said.
She lay mute and unmoving. He approached, laid his hand on her breast, and kissed her.
“Love,” he said, asserting, and laughing.
But still she was completely mute and motionless. He threw bedclothes over her and went downstairs, whistling softly.
She knew she would have to break her own trance of obstinacy. So she snuggled down into the bedclothes, shivering deliciously, for her skin had become chilled. She didn’t care a bit, really, about her own downfall. She snuggled deliciously in the sheets, and admitted to herself that she loved him. In truth, she loved him—and she was laughing to herself.
Luxuriously, she resented having to get up and tackle her heap of broken garments. But she did it. She took other clothes, adjusted her hair, tied on her apron, and went downstairs once more. She could not find Ciccio: he had gone out. A stray cat darted from the scullery, and broke a plate in her leap. Alvina found her washing-up water cold. She put on more, and began to dry her dishes.
Ciccio returned shortly, and stood in the doorway looking at her. She turned to him, unexpectedly laughing.
“What do you think of yourself?” she laughed.
“Well,” he said, with a little nod, and a furtive look of triumph about him, evasive. He went past her and into the room. Her inside burned with love for him: so elusive, so beautiful, in his silent passing out of her sight. She wiped her dishes happily. Why was she so absurdly happy, she asked herself? And why did she still fight so hard against the sense of his dark, unseizable beauty? Unseizable, forever unseizable! That made her almost his slave. She fought against her own desire to fall at his feet. Ridiculous to be so happy.
She sang to herself as she
