“You got to marry me, Jeannette,” this purposeful young man said to her one day.
“Never,” said Jeannette resolutely.
“Oh, yes, you will,” he told her with equal confidence.
“Well, we’ll see about that. I don’t care for you; I wouldn’t marry you if I did; you are only annoying me with your attentions. I would really like you much better if you’d leave me alone.”
The very evening this conversation took place she found a beautiful little scarab pin waiting for her when she got home. She mailed it back to him at The Gibbs Engraving Company. The next day came perfume, and a day or two later a large roll of new magazines; he sent her candy, flowers, theatre tickets. She gave the candy away, threw the flowers out of the window, tore up the theatre tickets and sent the torn paste-boards back to him in a letter in which she told him further gifts would only anger her. They kept on coming with undiminished regularity. She wept; her mother scolded her; Devlin called. There was no evading him; he was everywhere.
One day, he grabbed her, took her in his arms, beat down her resistance, strained her to him, and kissed her savagely, hungrily on the mouth. In that instant she capitulated; something broke within her; an overwhelming force rose like a great tide, welled up over her head and submerged her. She wilted in his embrace, succumbed like a crushed lily and longed for him to trample on her.
Love, glorious, intoxicating, passionate, had sprung to life in her. She resented it; she was helpless against it. She fought—fought—fought to no purpose. It rode her, rowelled her, harried her. Martin Devlin had conquered her heart, but her will was another matter.
§ 8
Jeannette became miserably unhappy. She imagined she had experienced all love’s emotions when Roy Beardsley possessed her thoughts. She laughed now when she thought of them. She had been little more than a school girl then, with a school girl’s capacity for love,—a maiden’s love, virginal, immature. It was not to be compared with this flame that seethed within her now. Oh, God! Her love for Martin Devlin was an agony! For the first time in her life she knew the full meaning of fear. She feared this man with a fear like terror. Ruthlessly he obtruded himself into her life, ruthlessly he assaulted the securest fastnesses of it, ruthlessly, she dreaded, he would strike them down and subdue her will as easily as he had won her love. He was in her thoughts all day and all night; she trembled when he was near her; it was torment when they were apart. Again and again, she returned to her determination to put him out of her life; he would only cause her trouble; there was only unhappiness in store for them both. It was useless. Neither her thoughts nor Devlin had any mercy upon her. She knew at last what love, real love, was like; it was a raging fire, white-hot, scorifying, consuming.
His lips never again found hers after that first terrible moment of weakness. Sometimes he caught her to him and strained her in his arms, but her cheek or hair or neck received his eager kiss. She resisted these embraces with all her strength, struggled in his grasp. She was mortally afraid of him; mortally afraid of herself. Desire throbbed in all her veins. She clung desperately to the last redoubt in her defenses behind which every instinct told her safety lay. She would allow him no avenue of approach; she would tolerate no moment’s weakness in her fortitude.