She shook her head at each tabulated item. But how queer, how pitifully queer that he should dream he could be perseveringly refitted for her love as for a suit of clothes which required slight alteration.
“I’ve never cared for anyone but you, Deb. Never. Other fellows might say that and not mean it—but it’s true in my case. You can ask Beatrice, or mother. Or Abe—he always used to chaff me for not letting myself be plagued with girls. So you needn’t be jealous—you’re my first love, and I’m thirty-one.”
Calf-love, then.... No wonder he blundered at every move. But he ought to have got that phase over long ago. Calf-love, moon-love ... pretty enough from a lad of twenty-one; but from thirty-one you expect a man’s defter handling. “You needn’t be jealous.” Should she tell him her fervent wish that some suave brilliant woman had indeed shaped him for present enlightenment? Deb had no ambition to be instructress.... But he would not believe her ... impregnated as he was with his theory of female psychology.
“All girls say ‘no’ when they mean ‘yes’; all girls like to pretend they’re not worthy; all girls are jealous of the other woman in a fellow’s past; all girls——” Deb was too tired to combat the ‘all-girls’ convention.
She stood up: “I want to go home, Samson.” And he stood directly facing her.... A presentiment seized her that he was going to crush her in his arms. Perhaps, if he did—but no.
“I shall always be waiting for you when you want me, little girl. I don’t change, you know. Hope and wait—that’s going to be my motto!” He straightened his shoulders and pulled down his tunic and smiled at her.
Her hands flew up as though to push away a suffocating pressure. A past that held her only, the encompassing present—and now he claimed the future as well.... “It’s so heavy,” murmured Deb. He must not be allowed to wait for her—he must not. Could no word, no act of hers shrivel the Phillips’ illusion? Besides ... there were moods which might assail her, driven, persecuted moods that cried for anchorage; soft drowsy Oriental moods, when for sheer languor one might yield—neither of these moods ought to be open to the peril of a Samson waiting and hoping.
“It’s no good, Samson,” with ebbing conviction. And she hated his persistence—until she saw his eyes, dogged with misery, eager with the want of her.
“Then may I—I wonder if you would grant me a last favour? The victim at the block, you know,” stumbling over a laugh.