For that explanation both solved the enigma of her visit, and coincided with his former conception of her. The surprise had been her acquiescence, not her rebuff.
She looked up at him pitifully, and shook her head.... His mouth grew hard: if not mistress, nor demi-maid, then what did she expect he would make of her? Surely she could not be hoping.... Blair Stevenson’s wife, if ever materialized from wraithdom, would not be the sort of girl who came to his rooms alone at 10.15 p.m. Nor would his mistress—she not at all a wraith—plead to leave them again after a futile half-hour of compromise. No, Deb (and he still thought her charming) was qualified not for chastity nor for fierce desire.... What did she want of him?
Her intuition leapt to what was passing in his mind; and in stinging agony that he should behold in her a huntress for a likely husband, she said quickly—“I did—I did want to play—only to play. But—you frightened me....”
“Forget that. I’m getting old and dense. And all men try ... once, you know. But it’s all right, Deb....”
It was all right—now; at the demi-price of her demi-virtue, she had saved at least that tattered beggar-maid she still called her pride. “I believe you thought I had come with a matrimonial lasso coiled up in my hand,” she taunted him.
And Blair was deceived, for all his penetration. How was he to know, indeed, that daringly as she had repudiated his suspicion, in a little backwater of thought trembled still an eddy from old times and old traditions: “It—would—have—been—rather nice ... to marry him....” But you have just proved you are not in love with him. “Oh—that kind of thing—wouldn’t matter. I believe it would grow of itself ... if he were looking after me.” Her set smile curved into real merriment as it struck her how Samson would approve of these sentiments. Perhaps she and Samson were kindred souls, after all!
But Samson would most certainly not have approved of her present abandonment to a demi-lover. She lay with an apathetic hand straying over his hair and eyebrows, wondering a little at the hard cheek pressed close to hers, wondering a little ... how soon she could say it was time to go, whether there were any letters waiting for her at home, if that pale young lance-corporal who had fainted as she put the coffee-cup into his hands, had recovered yet; wondering a little, as Blair shifted their positions, and drew her head down to where his shirt opened on to his heart—Did Blair really enjoy this? ought she not to say she was uncomfortable and had a crick in her neck? Whether she were now what is called a sinner?—pêcheresse in French ... or was it pécheuse? one of them meant the “fisherman’s wife”—she remembered that from school—yes, pêcheuse, surely—they were taught to tell the difference by the resemblance of the circumflex to the roof of the fisherman’s hut. The other has an accent aigü—but Deb had never been quite able to disentangle a vague notion that a fisherman’s wife was also a sinner. Pêcheuse—pécheresse....
She wondered anew if that monstrosity on the wall opposite were a Hogarth? if her watch would be mended by to-morrow, as the man at the shop had faithfully promised?...
“Are you happy, you small white Deb?”
She sighed “Yes....”