There was little charm about Huntley and less companionship. He was too arrogant for companionship. But he abounded in ideas, he knew much, and so he interested her. He talked. He pursued her with the steadfast scrutiny of his large grey eyes—and with arguments. He tried to argue and manœuvre Joan into a passionate love for him.
Well, Joan had a broad brow; she thought things over; she was amenable to ideas.
He harped on “freedom.” He carried freedom far beyond the tempered liberties of ordinary human association. Any ordinary belief was by his standards a limitation of freedom. There was a story that he had once been caught burgling a house in St. John’s Wood and had been let off by the magistrate only because the crime seemed absolutely motiveless. No doubt he had been trying to convince himself of his freedom from prejudice about the rights of property. He had an obscure idea that he could induce Joan to plunge into wild depravities merely to prove himself free from her own decent instincts. But he was ceasing to care for his argument if only he could induce her.
There was a moment when he said, “Joan, you are the one woman”—he always called her a woman—“who could make me marry her.”
“I’ll spare you,” said Joan succinctly.
“Promise me that.”
“Promise.”
“Anyhow.”
“Anyhow.”
On this Christmas afternoon he discoursed again upon freedom. “You, Joan, might be the freest of the free, if only you chose. You are absolutely your own mistress. Absolutely.”