“Maybe it isn’t love-making,” he argued. “I think it isn’t, myself. It’s a fair exchange, and therefore robs nobody.”
She did not move away, but she had not surrendered. Off in the depths of her mind something was striving to be heard. It seemed like long strings of sentences, too far off to be deciphered, marching, marching, in an undulating line over hill and valley, hurrying to her aid. She smiled as she recalled Mark Twain’s picture of the German language sprawling in that same fashion with a separable verb tacked on the end.
“I didn’t mean to do this,” he poured in her ear. “It was not in my thoughts until you put it there that day you and I talked about the ‘frat’ pin. Since then I have been aching to—do this. It’s nature. It’s just instinct, I suppose.”
Instinct! That was it. The marching line of words came clearly into view now. “There are good instincts and bad instincts,” it shouted at her. “Which will you have? Take your choice. The archangel of the Lord offers you one; Lucifer and his demons offer you another. Choose; and be exalted or forever damned.”
She twisted his arms from around her and got up.
“We’re both a little mad, I think.” She steadied herself and looked away from his eager eyes. “This won’t do. No!” She faced him and pushed him away. “Stop it, I tell you. I’m awake now. For a minute or two I was drunk.... What a storm you raised in me, Neddie Morris!... Oof! Let’s get out of here and breathe some air. I’m suffocated.”
For the remainder of that day she was obdurate. He was not permitted to touch her. Eventually he became bitter, tried unsuccessfully to quarrel with her, and finally left her in a huff.
And she was not ashamed. That was the oddest consequence, she thought. There was nothing, then, to tell her whether this instinct was a good or a bad one. It had seemed so right and natural, and—this she reluctantly confessed—it had been absolutely satisfactory.
She recalled the eager people who begged of the pale stranger to sojourn with them. How beautiful he must have appeared to them, just as this first experience was beautiful. Ignorance of the obvious had blinded their eyes as it now blinded hers. Leprosy! Hideous! But the “tobogganing,” what else did it lead to? She knew enough of her sisterhood to be aware of the wages eventually paid.
Almost the last touch of girlhood went from her that hour. Maturity lurked in her eyes as never before; in her step and carriage, even in the tones of her voice. The last trace of awkwardness in gait and speech disappeared, vanished suddenly. The ship had found herself and was surging through the tossing seas. Slight as the experience had been, it had not been slight in its effects. It gave her a kind of pride, as of one who had achieved something; and,—what strange thoughts go packed together!—it filled her with understanding sympathy for all wayward women. From that hour, another odd result, she became her mother’s intimate and friend. There were no more “rows”; and, so inconsistent a thing is memory, no one seemed to remember that Gorgas had ever been a difficult problem in the family.