He was thinking that soon he would see Monica. He was wondering how she would be. He was wondering if she was ready for him, or if she would have a thousand obstacles around her. He was wondering if she would want him to plead and play the humble and say he wasn't good enough for her. Because he wouldn't do it. Not if he never saw her again. All that flummery of love he would not subscribe to. He would not say he adored her, because he didn't adore her. He was not the adoring sort. He would not make up to her, and play the humble to her, because it insulted his pride. He didn't feel like that, and he never would feel like that, not towards any woman on earth. Even Mary, once he had declared himself, would fetch up her social tricks and try to bring him to his knees. And he was not going down on his knees, not for half a second, not to any woman on earth, nor to any man either. Enough of this kneeling flummery.
He stood fast and erect on his two feet, that had travelled many wild miles. And fast and erect he would continue to stand. Almost he wished he could be clad in iron armour, inaccessible. Because the thought of women bringing him down and making him humble himself, before they would give themselves to him, this turned his soul black.
Monica! He didn't love her. He didn't feel the slightest bit of sentimental weakening towards her. Rather when he thought of her his muscles went stiffer and his soul haughtier. It was not he who must bow the head. It was she.
Because he wanted her. With a deep, arrowy desire, and a long, lasting dark desire, he wanted her. He wanted to take her apart from all the world, and put her under his own roof.
But he didn't want to plead with her, or weep before her, or adore her, or humbly kiss her feet. The very thought of it made his blood curdle and go black. Something had happened to him in the Never-Never. Before he went over the border he might have been tricked into a surrender to this soft and hideous thing they called love. But now, he would have love in his own way, haughtily, passionately, and darkly, with dark, arrowy desire, and a strange, arrowly-submissive woman: either this, or he would not have love at all.
He thought of Monica and sometimes the thought of her sent him black with anger. And sometimes, as he thought of her wild, delicate, reckless, lonely little profile, a hot tenderness swept over him, and he felt he would envelop her with a fierce and sheltering tenderness, like a scarlet mantle.
So long as she would not fight against him, and strike back at him. Jeer at him, play with Easu in order to insult him. Not that, my God, not that.
As for Mary, a certain hate of her burned in him. The queer heavy stupid conceit with which she had gone off to dance with Boyd Blessington, because he was an important social figure. Mary, wanting to live on a farm, but at the same time absolutely falling before the social glamour of a Blessington, and becoming conceited on the strength of it. Inside herself, Mary thought she was very important, thought that all sorts of eternal destinies depended on her choice and her actions. Even Jack, was nothing more than an instrument of her divine importance.
He had sensed this clearly enough. And it was this that made Aunt Matilda a bit spiteful against her, when she said that Mary was "heavy" and wouldn't easily get a man.
But there was also the queer black look in Mary's eyes, that was outside her conceit and her social importance. The queer, almost animal dark glisten, that was full of fear and wonder, and vulnerability. Like the look in the eyes of a caught wild animal. Or the look in the shining black eyes of one of the aborigines, especially the black woman looking askance in a sort of terror at a white man, as if a white man was a sort of devil that might possess her.