“Stop thinking, dearest dear. Come with me and stay with me forever. Come now! . . .”
She withdrew herself from his arm. “I will not,” she murmured.
Joe returned to the fireplace and flung himself into one of the big chairs. “Oh God! you do try a man’s patience!” he exclaimed. “You want me, and you don’t want me! Where is this going to end?”
“I’m afraid of you,” Elaine said suddenly. She had turned, and was looking at him somberly. The fear she spoke of was not evident in her glance.
Joe laughed softly. “That’s flattering,” he said: “for you’re the bravest woman I know.”
She went a step or two towards him. She seemed to speak by a power outside herself. “In our maddest moments your eyes are still measuring me. You never lose yourself. . . . You should not have forced me to speak of this. I see that all the things I ordinarily say are mere nonsense—like the noises made by savages to keep devils off. . . . You have roused a fever in me that is burning me up. . . . But . . . but . . . I don’t want to have a child. . . .”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Joe, startled, showing his teeth.
The jangling voice recalled her to herself, wincing. She walked unevenly up and down. “The nonsense that they teach girls!” she murmured. “It made a rebel of me. I had prudence and obedience and chastity thrust down my throat until I fell in love with everything that was reckless and bad. I understood the devil worshippers. That’s how you got me. . . .”
“I don’t care how I got you,” said Joe with a secret smile.
She came to a stop. Her eyes were widely distended and quite unseeing. She made vague passes with her hand in the effort to express the inexpressible. “But all that stuff I laughed at . . . religion . . . all that stuff . . . is getting back at me . . . I mean may be it is . . . all kinds of things are working inside me . . . maybe there’s something in it. . . .”