The praise, the sympathy, the passion were astounding, marvellous, and delicious to her. Was it conceivable that this experienced and worldly man had been captivated by such a mere girl as herself? She had never guessed it! Or had she always guessed it? An intense pride warmed her blood like a powerful cordial. Life was even grander than she had thought!... She drooped into an intoxication. Among all that he had said, he had not said that he was not stronger than she. He had not relinquished his authority. She felt it, sitting almost beneath him in the slippery chair. She knew that she would yield to him. She desired to yield to him. Her mind was full of sensuous images based on the abdication of her will in favour of his.
"Now, look here, Hilda. I want to tell you--"
He perhaps did not intend that she should look up; but she looked up. And she was surprised to see that his face was full of troubled hesitations, showing almost dismay. He made the motion of swallowing. She smiled; and set her shoulders back--the very gesture that she had learned from him.
"What?" she questioned, in a whisper.
Her brief mood of courage was over. She sank before him again, and waited with bowed head.
Profoundly disturbed, he stood quite still for a few seconds, with shut lips, and then he made another step to approach.
"Your name's got to be Cannon," she heard him say.
She thought, still waiting: "If this goes on a moment longer I shall die of anticipation, in bliss." And when she felt his hand on her shoulder, and the great shadow of him on part of her face, her body seemed to sigh, acquiescent and for the moment assuaged: "This is a miracle, and life is miraculous!" She acknowledged that she had lacked faith in life.
She was now on the river, whirling. But at the same time she was in the small, hot room, and both George Cannon's hands were on her unresisting shoulders; and then they were round her, and she felt his physical nearness, the texture of his coat and of his skin; she could see in a mist the separate hairs of his tremendous moustache and the colours swimming in his eyes; her nostrils expanded in transient alarm to a faint, exciting masculine odour. She was disconcerted, if not panic-struck, by the violence of his first kiss; but her consternation was delectable to her.
And amid her fright and her joy, and the wonder of her extreme surprise, and the preoccupation of being whirled down the river, she calmly reflected, somewhere in her brain: "The door is not locked. Supposing some one were to come in and see us!" And she reflected also, in an ecstasy of relief: "My life will be quite simple, now. I shall have nothing to worry about. And I can help him." For during a year past she had never ceased to ask herself what she must do to arrange her life; her conscience had never ceased to tell her that she ought not to be content to remain in the narrow ideas of her mother, and that though she preferred marriage she ought to act independently of the hope of it. Throughout her long stay in Preston Street she had continually said: "After this--what? This cannot last for ever. When it comes to an end what am I to do to satisfy my conscience?" And she had thought vaguely of magnificent activities and purposes--she knew not what.... The problem existed no more. Her life was arranged. And now, far more sincerely than in the King's Road twenty minutes earlier, she regarded the career of a spinster with horror and with scorn. At best, she suddenly perceived with blinding clearness, it would have been pitiful--pitiful! Twenty minutes earlier, in the King's Road, she had dreamt of belonging absolutely to some man, of being at his disposal, of being under his might, of being helpless before him. And now!... Miracle thrice miraculous! Miracle unconceived, inconceivable!... No more 'talk' now!...