"Oh, I shall think about it right enough, don't you worry," she said in an odd voice. "I shall think about it when I'm hungry. I shall think about it when I'm tired. It's a long way from the theater to King's Cross Road. I shall think about it when I see the other girls sneering at me because I haven't got a boy. I shall think about it in the summer time when people go to the sea and take off their clothes, and I shall think of it in the winter when I'd like a few more on. You needn't think I don't know that you're tempting me." Her voice nearly broke.
"Then be friends," urged Woolf again. "What's to prevent you?"
"Lexie. Lexie would be cut up. Lexie has made me think more of myself since I've known her than I ever did before. If it wasn't for her do you think I'd traipse home night after night to that slummy little room that's dear at fifteen shillings a week? She's not used to the life, and if she can hold out against it I ought to be able to who've never known anything better. Well, thanks for a nice lunch. You've fed the hungry. That's one good mark for you."
Woolf led her back into the other room and shut the door.
"You'll kiss me before you go," he said imperiously.
He had her by the wrists. His strong grasp sent a thrill through her. Though she resisted she wished there were no harm in letting him kiss her, wished that his offer were not based on wrong-doing. It was not only because he could give her material things that she was tempted. She had stumbled across a man who made a direct call to her nature, and she knew it. De Freyne, callously unselective, could not have deliberately chosen an individual more likely to encompass Maggy's surrender. Woolf was not young: nearly forty. But he was so blatantly good-looking, so—so swaggering. Maggy knew he was selfish and probably a little unkind, possibly bad-tempered, that he would never care for a woman in the way that women crave to be cared for, tenderly, protectively. All the same, she knew that she would get too fond of him if she saw him often and that he would go to her head....
Even now she felt dizzy. Her habitual self-confidence deserted her. She experienced an overmastering desire to fling herself into his arms and cry and cry, to tell him how difficult everything was, and how she had tried.... But she knew perfectly well that he would not understand. He was a man who would never understand women's feelings because he did not think them worth understanding. As long as there were women in the world, plenty of pretty ones, their feelings did not matter. Flowers did not feel when one picked them, or if they did, well, that was what they were there for: to be picked.
"You don't want to kiss me against my will, do you?"
Maggy struggled free. As a matter of fact Woolf's grasp had relaxed. He was quite ready for the interview to end. He had a business appointment at three and did not want to be late for it. If Maggy had offered him her soul at three that afternoon, or what interested him far more, her substance, he would not have foregone his appointment. That was the man.
"Well, good-by," he said, without further persuasion. "You can go home in my car. I'll 'phone to the garage now."