“Wait one minute,” murmured Deb, industriously and wholly absorbed in her labours.
Antonia continued, in serene mockery of Gillian: “And I, for one, am not in the least difficulty, thanks, over how to dispose of myself sexually in the abstract. And I shouldn’t imagine from external evidence that you were either, Jill. Zoe, are you at all puzzled how to dispose of yourself sexually in the abstract? Henceforth and hereafter there’s always Pinto, isn’t there, when the supply of other friendly aliens is exhausted?”
“You may laugh,” cried that young person in eager defence of her continental tastes—“but it doesn’t seem natural to me to be made love to in English—it doesn’t really! I always have to turn it into French or Italian or Portuguese in my head, before it becomes decent somehow. Isn’t it funny? but it’s quite true. I suppose it’s a habit.”
“Nell is a minor and an adolescent, and, like Jill’s more obscure diseases, prefers to keep herself to herself,” Antonia went on, “so there’s no need to include her in our enquiry. Winifred lives mainly in a state of mental sloth, and is not, I think, wrestling very furiously with the sexual problem.”
“As long as she’s only kissed at the extremities,” Zoe threw in.
“Manon is, we hear, formally and decorously engaged to be married. So there really remains only Deb, of the whole group, who might be said to be in difficulties over the disposal of herself sexually in the abstract. And Deb is a goose.”
“And Deb is a goose!” echoed Zoe and Gillian in affirmative chorus.
Deb gave a final snip, flung the scissors down, and faced the company. “How do you like me?”
“Well,” remarked Gillian, after they had all stared in solemn criticism for several minutes, “I hardly think the shears have disposed of the problem....”
It was, indeed, a quaint enough perversity that Deb’s present flying mop of short black hair caused her to look even more girlish than hitherto; perhaps it was the pure beautiful curve of her throat, now visible from every angle. Her little round head was the head of a child-saint; her slim body, lightly-poised and undeveloped, was pathetic anomaly to eyes and mouth which revealed a mind that had heard of all sin, and was blunt to all sin, and weary of all sin ... victim of the transition period.