“So we’ve disposed of obstacle number one”; Samson’s spirits were rising rapidly. (But how have we disposed of it? thought Deb.) “Come now, what’s obstacle number two?”
“It’s because you’re such a united family”—she struggled hard to find expressive words—“that you owe it to them to put the right sort of girl in the spare place. Don’t you see, oh, don’t you see, Samson, that I should spoil the cantata.”
“But they like you tremendously, little girl; mother and Beatrice are awfully fond of you. And when you get to know Flo and Martha and Gwen——”
“It’s no good. I should make you wretched. Oh—why do you want ... just me?”
“You are the embodiment of the qualities I most admire in a woman.”
And he believed it, too. And was unaware that it was some elusive pixie element about the girl—a subtle swing of movement, a freshness thrilling in her voice, some fleeting curving trick of her lip and eyelids, a scornful daintiness which were magic to his manhood, and which would haunt him and escape him, trip up his senses and beckon him on again ... that it was this which, subconsciously, kept him persistent for just Deb, and no other girl. But he was sincere enough, talking rubbish about embodiment of qualities. This was her pixiness, translated into Samsonese.
Deb sighed. “One would suppose you wanted to be tormented for all the rest of your life.”
“In what special ways are you so determined to torment me?” he teased her.
“Everything can’t be drawn up in lists.... I should get restless moods, and want to do all sorts of things that you’d think funny or mad or imprudent—or unnecessary, and I should want to do them there and then and at once ... without thinking them over. And I shall hate being asked questions, and turn sulky over answering them. And I’d go away without you, and forget to write. And ask for a latch-key. And invite people to see me whom you aren’t sure are the right sort, and discuss topics that you’re quite sure are the wrong sort. And shock your mother by not taking enough interest in little Fanny. And get furiously excited over a book or a picture or a bit of verse or a face or—or ... the way a studio is arranged, or the first summer day in March, before anyone expected it ... the first day that one can fling one’s self down on to warm green grass and lie there ... and lie there dreaming....”
The byway of argument was fatal. She had forgotten that Samson had a corner in Nature.