“Damn Gordon!” he exclaimed, “he’s not going to get in the way again! You’re mine and I’m going to keep you. You will go. I’ll take you!”
He had seized her in his arms, was holding her furiously tight. She put her arms around him, caressed his face with soft fluttering hands.
“Please, Ramon! Please don’t make me miserable. Don’t spoil the only happiness I ever had! I will go with you if ever I can, if I can get a divorce or something. But I can’t run off like that. I haven’t got it in me … please let me be happy!”
Her touch and her voice seemed to overcome his determination, seemed to sheer him of his strength. Weaker she was than he, but her charm was her power. It dragged him away from his thoughts and purposes, binding him to her and to the moment.… She drew his head down to her breast, found his lips with hers and so effectively cut his protests short.
The cream of his happiness was gone. Always when he was alone, he was thinking and planning how he could keep her. All of his possessiveness was aroused. He wanted her to have a baby. Somehow he felt that then his conquest would be complete, that then he would be at peace.…
He said nothing more to Julia because he saw [pg 246] that it was useless. He began to understand her a little. It was futile to ask her to make a decision, to take any initiative. She could hold out forever against pleas which involved an effort of the will on her part. And yet as he knew she could yield charmingly to pressure adroitly applied. If he had asked her to meet him in New York this way, he reflected, she would have been horrified, she would never have consented. But when he came, suddenly, that had been different. So it was now. If he could only form a really good plan, and then put her in a cab and take her … that would be the only way. The difficulty was to form the plan. He had capacity for sudden and decisive action. He lacked neither courage nor resolution. But when it came to making a plan which would require much time and patience, he found his limitations.
What could he do? he asked himself, not realizing that in formulating the question he acknowledged his impotence. If he went away and left her while he settled his affairs, she was lost as surely as a bird released from a cage. The idea of Mexico City allured him. But he had hardly enough money to take them there. How could he raise money on short notice? It would take time to settle his estate in New Mexico and get anything out of it.…
Two unrealized facts lay at the root of his [pg 247] difficulty. One was that he had no capacity for large and intricate plans, and the other was that he felt bound as by an invisible tether to the land where he had been born.
As he struggled with all these conflicting considerations and emotions, his head fairly ached with futile effort. He was glad to lay it upon Julia’s soft bosom, to forget everything else again in the sweetness of a stolen moment.