“Oh, Tom!” He relegated that subject to oblivion with princely carelessness. “Look here, if we start dancing again, someone’s bound to cut in on me right off—and I want to talk to you!”
She followed him as he led the way downstairs to the dark, scented stillness that was the college swimming-pool in more unromantic times. Here and there along the sides she could see the glowing ends of cigarettes; but Barnett led her down to the end of the pool, where they were far from everyone, and found a sofa underneath some leafy thing that he told her was one of the many potted palms strewn around the place. They sat down. He sat very near her.
“How old are you?” he wanted to know. “No, don’t tell me—you might be any age. Yesterday, you might have been eighteen. To-night, you are twenty-five—at least that. By gad, I like a girl to vary!”
Somehow in the darkness his hand found hers. It was moist, hot; the sensation was very disagreeable; but Joy did not take hers away. She could not think quickly about anything at all—
“You—I never met anyone like you.” His voice was coming hurried, breathless; there was something in the contact of her hand that utterly changed the tone of it. “You—you’re ripping me all to pieces to-night!”
Before she could realize what was happening, he had his arms around her and had pressed her to him in the moist, warm darkness. She knew he was searching for her lips.
Joy closed her eyes in the palpitant blackness; his kiss would be mysterious, wonderful.
But when it came, it was neither mysterious nor wonderful. Cold with the shock, she tried to wrench herself free from the hideous reality of the thing; but he was holding her so tightly that she was powerless to move. She gasped for breath to speak, but he pressed her to him more closely than ever, and kissed her again and again.
When he finally released her, her breath was coming in painful sobs. “What’s the matter?” he said thickly. “Don’t you like me any more?”
“I—I—you’ve been drinking!”