"You wouldn't be comfortable," she said, while an expression that was almost hostile crept over her full red mouth. "It is so different from anything you have known."
His smile was winning. "I shouldn't mind that if you wanted me."
She looked over his head at the elm boughs arching against the sky. Yes, it was lilac time in Virginia. She saw the rich clusters drooping beside the whitewashed walls, under the grey eaves where wrens were building. The door was open, and the fragrance swept the clean, bare hall, with the open door at, the other end, beyond which the green slope swelled upward to the pear orchard. Over all, there was the big pine on the hill, brushing the quiet sky like a bird's outstretched wing. How peaceful it seemed. After the storm through which she had passed, tranquillity meant happiness.
The silence had grown intimate, tender, provocative; and for a moment she had a feeling of relaxation from tension, as if the iron in her soul were dissolving. Then the pressure of his fingers tightened, and she shivered and drew away her hand.
"You don't like me to touch you?" he asked, and there was a hurt look in his eyes.
She shook her head. "I don't like anybody to touch me."
"Are you as hard as that?"
"I suppose I am hard, but I can't change."
"Not if I wait? I can wait as long as you make me."
"It wouldn't make any difference. Waiting wouldn't change me. I've finished with all that."