Abruptly she stood up. “Let’s get back, George.” He stood beside her. “But it’s early.”
“I know, but sometimes—Well, there’s a psychological moment to end a date, George. I know that sounds silly, but after what we’ve said, wouldn’t it be—uh—anticlimactic—to—”
He laughed a little. He said, “I see what you mean.”
They walked back to her home in silence. He didn’t know whether it was happy or unhappy silence; he was too mixed up for that.
On the shadowed porch, in front of the door, she turned and faced him. “George,” she said. Silence.
“Oh, damn you, George; quit being so noble or whatever you’re being. Unless, of course, you don’t love me. Unless this is just an elaborate form of—of runaround you’re giving me. Is it?”
There were only two things he could do. One was run like hell. The other was what he did. He put his arms around her and kissed her. Hungrily.
When that was over, and it wasn’t over too quickly, he was breathing a little hard and not thinking too clearly, for he was saying what he hadn’t meant to say at all, “I love you, Clare. I love you; I love you.”
And she said, “I love you, too, dear. You’ll come back to me, won’t you?” And he said, “Yes. Yes.”
It was four miles or so from her home to his rooming house, but he walked, and the walk seemed to take only seconds.