His blood quickened. Was she reproaching him or simply saying, “You love me; we’re alone together?” She was leaning forward now, looking away from him, her throat resting against the back of her hand. He crept toward her, knelt at her feet and pressed his lips against her dress.
Her eyes came back to him. “You’d better go away and forget me.”
He slipped his arm about her body, drawing her to him. “Do you want me to go away—to go out of your life forever?”
“No.” The word was whispered and slowly uttered. She touched him gently, patting his hand. “Peter, I’m not your sort. You know that.”
“But you are my sort, or else how could I feel—feel what I am feeling? You’ll learn to love me, Cherry.”
She took it without a tremor, this declaration which had cost him such effort. She shook her head. “The Faun Man tells Eve that every time they’re together. I wonder how many men have said it. Love comes in an instant. You can’t learn it.”
“But why not?”
She bent over him like a mother. Her mouth was rounded; no wonder they called her Cherry. She was adorable in compassion. “You don’t know me. I’m not at all what you think. Ask the Faun Man. Don’t you remember at the Happy Cottage? It wasn’t for breaking his pictures that he sent me to the convent.”
“But I’ll make you love me,” he insisted. “You don’t know what I’d do for you. I’d die for you, Cherry. There’s nothing about you that I don’t worship. You’re so long and sweet—and———” He laid his face against her cold, white cheek and caught his breath. She was like marble; he could feel no stir in her—and his every nerve was throbbing. “Don’t you like to be loved?”
She seemed to marvel at his passion, as if it were a thing which she did not understand, by which she was puzzled. Oddly, to his way of thinking, she showed no terror of him. Her eyes dwelt on him with clear and kindly interest. “Every girl likes to be loved. But that’s different. I don’t think you’ll ever teach me, Peter. And yet——. Hadn’t we better be getting back?”