She had known Culpepper would come from the moment she dropped her note to him in the letterbox at the corner last night. And now that he had come she was afraid to go down and meet him. Afraid of what? She couldn't have said; instinct didn't take her that far; it only sent her down the steps hesitatingly and constrainedly.
Culpepper the undemonstrative, the coolly unflattering in his attitude always, swung about at the sound of her footsteps and met her at the parlor door.
She held out a hand, a soft and pretty hand, its mate going up at the same time to push back some imaginary troublesome lock, a characteristic gesture with her when she was embarrassed.
But Culpepper having taken the soft hand proffered, put it over into his left one, and——
("Oh, Culpepper, no, I'm not ten now!")
—with the frowning and horrific air of a fearsome captor, undoubtedly an ogre captor intent and not to be deterred, went creepingly after its mate and cunningly caught it and brought it down and put it, with even more diablerie of horrific cunning alongside the other upon his big left palm, and—
("Culpepper, don't—don't do it, it frightens me still!")
—like as when the compassionless keeper of the ogre dungeon into which the victim is thrust, lowers the overhead stone that fits into its place—lowered his big right hand upon these two soft ones——
And why not? So he used to catch her and tease her when she was ten, playing the thing through in realistic pantomime until she, throwing herself on him, clung to him perforce! But she was not that little girl! Nor did she feel as a little girl feels any longer! She tried to take her hands away.