“Of course I don’t despise you! I think you’re a—I think you’re—a fine woman,” he said, ineptly. “Come now! Don’t cry, my dear girl! You’ll make yourself ill, you know.”
As gently as possible he disengaged her clinging arms and made her sit down in the chair again, then he dipped a towel in cold water and wiped her swollen eyes. He had not as yet had time to realise the awkwardness of this affair; he was, to tell the truth, just a little elated. Supermanly.
He talked to her soothingly until she had stopped crying, then:
“It’s getting late,” he said, “we’d really better be——”
She jumped up again, so violently that her dishevelled hair came down and fell over her shoulders. She seized him by the wrist.
“I won’t go!” she cried.
And caught him round the neck and strained him to her, kissing him wildly.
But why try to tell of all that—the eternal wiles of a passionate woman? He had no weapon against her. He had his love for Frankie, but this was not love. He had his ideas of honour, he was fastidious, he was, after a fashion, somewhat austere. But his safety, and the safety of all his sex—lay only in avoiding the irresistible. And of all the allurements in the world, there is none to compare with the abandon of the respectable woman.