CHAPTER X

His conquest was far from giving him peace. Her kiss had transformed his high vague yearning into hot relentless desire. He wanted her. That became the one clear thing in life to him. Reflections and doubts were alien to his young and primitive spirit. He did not try to look far into the future. He only knew that to have her would be delight almost unimaginable and to lose her would be to lose everything.

His attitude toward her changed. He claimed her more and more at dances. She did not want to dance with him so much because “people would talk,” but his will was harder than hers and to a great extent he had his way. He now called on her regularly too. He knew that she had fought hard for him against her family, and had won the privilege for him of calling “not too often.”

“I’ve lied for you frightfully,” she confessed. “I told them I didn’t really care for you in the least, but I want to see you because you can tell such wonderful things about the country. So talk about the country whenever they’re listening. And don’t look at me the way you do.…”

Mother and brother were alert and suspicious despite her assurance, and manœuvred with cool skill to keep the pair from being alone. Only rarely did he get the chance to kiss her—once when her brother, who was standing guard over the family treasure, was seized with a fit of coughing and had to leave the room, and again when her mother was called to the telephone. At such times she shrank away from him at first as though frightened by the intensity of the emotion she had created, but she never resisted. To him these brief and stolen embraces were almost intolerably sweet, like insufficient sips of water to a man burned up with thirst.

She puzzled him as much as ever. When he was with her he felt as sure of her love as of his own existence. And yet she often sought to elude him. When he called up for engagements she objected and put him off. And she surrounded herself with other men as much as ever, and flirted gracefully with all of them, so that he was always feeling the sharp physical pangs of jealousy. Sometimes he felt egotistically sure that she was merely trying by these devices to provoke his desire the more, but at other times he thought her voice over the phone sounded doubtful and afraid, and he became wildly eager to get to her and make sure of her again.