'No. I suppose you wouldn't, as you're not in love.'
I then remarked that, though I could understand her not being in love with a man my uncle's age, it was my belief that she had never in her life been in love. Not even with Siegfried. Not with anybody.
Dolly said she hadn't, and that she liked people much too much to want to grab at them.
'Grab at them!'
'That's what your being in love does,' said Dolly. 'It grabs.'
'But you've been grabbed yourself, and you liked it. Uncle Rudolph is certainly bent on grabbing you.'
'Yes. But the man gets over it quicker. He grabs and has done with it, and then settles down to the real things,—affection and kindness. A woman hasn't ever done with it. She can't let go. And the poor thing, because she what you call loves, is so dreadfully vulnerable, and gets so hurt, so hurt—'
Dolly began kissing me and stroking my hair.
'I think though,' I said, while she was doing this, 'I'd rather have loved thoroughly—you can call it grabbing if you like, I don't care what ugly words you use—and been vulnerable and got hurt, than never once have felt—than just be a sort of amiable amoeba—'
'Has it occurred to you,' interrupted Dolly, continuing to kiss me—her cheek was against mine, and she was stroking my hair very tenderly—'that if I marry that dear little uncle of yours I shall be your aunt?'