Zoe cried, appalled at Deb’s elasticity of speech, “Well, I must say, Deb, I think you’re horrid. I do, really. I’m not a prig, but I don’t think you’re a bit nice. I suppose I’m old-fashioned. And I’m not at all surprised at Winnie....” who, with a crimson face at the word “mistress,” had marched out of the room.
“That doesn’t matter,” Gillian defended Deb, with that odd incongruous air of casual authority which was unconsciously based on her years of vital work and clear thinking and swift unerring sense of values; on a courageous judgment that hummed through the air like an arrow, and stuck quivering in the gold; on the deference she received from her equals, men with good brains and of good quality; men of genius, even, who had deferred to her in her own line. “Winnie does quite a good deal of what one might call ‘spooning’ ... ‘adventuring on debatable ground’ ... ‘half-a-loafing’ ... whatever you like. But it’s just that she can’t bear—the labels. While one is vague about the name of a thing, it’s all right, according to Winnie. She’s not a conscious humbug; belongs to a type. And she enjoys the half-loaf—like Zoe. Well, call it her quarter-loaf. The point is—do you enjoy yours, Deb? I don’t believe you do. And if you don’t, it’s not worth it. In the case of Blair Stevenson, for instance?”
Deb made a desperate attempt to shed all her psycho-entanglements, and be honest—because it was Jill who asked. And this, even though she had long ago discovered that the self one pretends to is much more convincing to the hearer, than the self nearer to reality. A detached attitude helps expression.
“It pleases him and it doesn’t hurt me,” she summed up slowly.
“And what’s the object of pleasing him?” Antonia enquired, in scorn of the masculine claim.
“That it doesn’t hurt me.”
“It has hurt you. It has hurt all of us—through you.” Her lower lip quivered; proudly she fastened it to composure with her teeth.
“Well?” Deb flung at Gillian; and thoughtfully came the answer:
“I’m not sitting in judgment, Deb. Who am I, etc. But it seems to me the natural thing to draw such pleasure from the touch of a man, that contact becomes beautiful and therefore true. Or else to be so repelled by it ... that you sit up and behave. But what possible reason you can have to lie there and merely suffer it without joy or fulfilment——”
“It does become annoying at times to think he’s having so much more fun than I,” flippantly. She pushed her hands impatiently through the hot thick masses of her hair. “Oh, I’m tired of being a girl, anyway. I’ll cut my hair short for a start, and be a boy. Have you got some big scissors, Jill?”