“Theory? I don’t know what theory is. I loved them. I put my arms round their necks and rubbed my face against their soft faces. It was very nice. I should like to do it every night before I go to sleep. I should like to do it now.”
“You shall,” said Siebenhaar, and he went out and came back with Arabella.
George leaped from his berth and flung his arms round her neck and embraced her, and she was so surprised and delighted that she kissed him, and Siebenhaar wept to see it.
“I don’t know who you are, madam,” he said, “but if I were you I should stick to that young man like a barnacle to a ship’s bottom. I would creep into his heart and curl up in it like a grub in a ripe raspberry, and I would go down on my knees and thank Heaven for having sent me the one man in the modern world who may be capable of a genuine and constant affection. You have him, madam, straight from his mother’s arms, with a soul, a heart, as virgin as I hope your own are.”
Arabella disengaged herself from George’s now ardent embrace, drew herself up, and with the haughtiness of her race, said:
“My father was a bishop of the Church of Fatland.”
“That,” said Siebenhaar, “does not exempt you from the normal internal economy of your sex or its need of the (perfectly honest) love of the opposite sex. My point is that you have here an unrivalled opportunity of meeting an honest love, and I implore you to take it.”
“I would have you know,” retorted Arabella, “that I am engaged to my late father’s chaplain.”
“War,” said Siebenhaar, “is war, and I should advise you to seek protection where it is offered.”
“If you would hold my hand in yours,” said George to Arabella, “I think I should sleep now. I am so tired.”