Teddy rarely heard any of their conversations. When he appeared, they grew silent. Even if Desire had not told him, he would have guessed that it was of Vashti they had been talking. Presently Hal would make an excuse to leave them. When the door had shut, Desire would slip her hand into his. Demonstrations of affection rarely went beyond that now. The place where they met and the continual possibility of interruption restrained them. There was another reason as far as Teddy was concerned: he realized that in New York he had cheapened his affection by forcing it on her. She told him as much.
“You thought that I was holding back; I wasn’t then, and I’m not now. Only—I hardly know how to put it—the first time you do things they thrill me; after that—— The second kiss is never as good as the first. Every time we repeat something it becomes less important. So you see, if we married, when we could do things always—I think that’s why I never kissed you. I wasn’t holding off; I was saving the best.”
A new frankness sprang up between them. They discussed their problem with a comic air of aloofness. Now that he gave her no opportunities to repulse him, her fits of coldness became more rare. Sometimes she would invite the old intimacies. “Meester Deek, I’m not sure that it’s so much fun being only friends.”
He was amused by her naïveté. “Perhaps it isn’t But don’t let’s spoil things by talking about it. Let’s be sensible.” In these days it was he who said, “Let’s be sensible.” She pouted when he said it, and accused him of strategy. “Be sweet to me, like you were.”
He steeled himself against her coquetry. Until she could tell him that his love was returned, he must not let her feel her power. “When you can do that,” he told her, “we’ll cease to be only friends.”
“And yet I do wish you’d pilfer sometimes.” She clasped her hands against her throat. “I want you, and I don’t want you. I don’t want any. one to have you; but if I had you always to myself, I shouldn’t know what to do with you. You’d be awful strict, I expect” She sighed and sank back in her chair. “It’s such a large order—marriage. I’m so young. A girl mortgages her whole future.”
She always approached these discussions from the angle of doubt. “When it was too late, you might see a girl you liked better.”
He assured her of the impossibility. She shook her head wisely. “It has happened.”
He read in her distrust the influence of the people among whom her girlhood had been spent, the Vashtis, Fluffys, and Mr. Daks—the slaves of freedom who, having disdained the best in life, used pleasure as a narcotic. He knew that it was not his inconstancy that she dreaded, but the chance that after marriage she herself might be fascinated by some man. The knowledge made him cautious. Nothing that he could say would carry any weight; he would be a defendant witnessing in his own defense. That she was willing to open her mind to him kept him hopeful. It was a step forward.
He brought his mother to see her. When she had gone Desire said, “I know now what you meant when you wanted me to be proud of you. I’d give anything to feel that I was really needed by a man I loved.” And then, “Meester Deek, you never talk to me about your work. Won’t you let me see what you’ve been doing?”