“Pluck?” She wrinkled her forehead and pursed her large mouth; “Courage, I mean”, I said.
“Oh, I have courage!” she rejoined.
“Did you ever come upstairs to Mrs. Mayhew’s bedroom”, I asked, “when I had gone up for a book?” The black eyes danced and she laughed knowingly.
“Mrs. Mayhew said that she had taken you upstairs to bathe your poor head after dancing”, she retorted disdainfully, “but I don’t care: it’s nothing to do with me what you do!”
“It has too,” I went on, carrying the war into her country. “How?” she asked.
“Why, the first day you went away and left me though I was really ill”, I said, “so I naturally believed that you disliked me though I thought you lovely!”
“I’m not lovely,” she said, “my mouth’s too big and I’m too slight.”
“Don’t malign yourself,” I replied earnestly, “that’s just why you are seductive and excite a man.”
“Really?” she cried, and so the talk went on while I cudgeled my brains for an opportunity but found none and all the while was in fear lest her father and mother should return. At length angry with myself, I got up to go on some pretext and she accompanied me to the stoop. I said “Good-bye” on the top step and then jumped down by the side with a prayer in my heart that she’d come a step or two down and she did. There she stood, her hips on a level with my mouth; in a moment my hands went up her dress, the right to her sex, the left to her bottom behind to hold her: the thrill as I touched her half-fledged sex was almost painful in intensity. Her first movement brought her sitting down on the step above me and at once my finger was busy in her slit.
“How dare you!” she cried, but not angrily, “take your hand away!”