With everything so favorable to his purpose, it continued to be a mystery to him that he still held back. This backwardness, this fear, was a new sensation. He had won prettier women in his day, and had won them briskly and straightforwardly, move by move, with cool premeditation.
Why should he falter at this one, like a ninny? What was it about her that checked and daunted him? She had flung herself at him; she had neither the will nor the knowledge to protect herself; she was as innocent as a child, and had delivered herself over to him as guilelessly. But it was not her innocence that stood in his way; he had no such scruples about innocence; innocence, if anything, ought to have whetted the pursuit. It was something subtler than that--this withholding force. It was more as though she were some proud young queen who had been craftily made drunk with drugs, and then had been abandoned in her helplessness to become the sport of a passing soldier.... How surprised Adair would have been had he been told that the love always on his lips, profaned with every breath he drew, a lie in every sense save the very lowest, was, in all good earnest, stealthily making entry in his heart!
Making? Why, it had been there from the first, all unknown to him. But like many a man the devious road seemed to him the straighter; it was the one he meant to follow, anyhow, lead where it might; he would overcome this strange squeamishness that annoyed and bewildered him. What an ass he was! He remembered his first deer, and how the rifle had shaken in his hands--how his teeth had chattered--how it had calmly walked past him, not twelve yards away, and disappeared unscathed. The boys had called it "buck fever," and had guyed him. Hell, this was a kind of buck fever, too, though without the excuse of inexperience ... but still there was no sense in hurrying matters. There was plenty of time, old fellow, plenty of time.
Thus the day lingered out in talk and vows and kisses, with nothing achieved in any direction, and the situation apparently unchanged. Love has a wonderful power of floating on without ever touching the banks of reality! And when one of the lovers keeps the bark deliberately in mid-stream, and the other poor lunatic is so lost in ecstasy that her understanding is in the skies--hours can pass like minutes, and darkness descend all unawares.
Again they kissed and parted, and Phyllis returned home in the sweet weariness of one who has drunk deep of the cup of love. No unanswered questions fretted her, no disturbing thoughts of why he had been silent on the most important thing of all. She was young, fresh, pretty, well-born and rich--why then should she doubt? What, to a little milliner, would have been the inevitable and all-engrossing conjecture, troubled her not a bit. Men had been proposing to her for two years; love out of wedlock, while it might be familiar in books, was inconceivably remote to her; marriage was like breathing; it was one of the great unconsidered facts of life; one loved--one married.
Her preoccupation was rather with closer and dearer things--the varying expressions of that fine and intensely alive face; the mouth with its ever changing charm; that, smiling, could lift one to paradise, that, laughing, seemed to gladden the whole world; the eyes so lustrous, so melting, and yet that at a word could turn so fierce; the wavy hair that was such a joy to her to caress; the broad shoulders that had pillowed her girlish head, and had given her such a comforting sense of vigor and strength--all her own by the divinest of divine rights. Womanlike, she was trying to merge herself in the man she loved; to subordinate her own individuality in his; to become, if she could, a slim, small, dainty counterpart of this God-given creature who had stooped to her from high Heaven itself.
She ate a good dinner and enjoyed it; drank a glass of claret with a connoisseur-like satisfaction in its fine bouquet; for she came of a stock with a royal taste for pleasure, in little things as well as big. If her father appeared somewhat constrained, and more grave and silent than was his wont, she ascribed it to nothing more than a hard day at the office; and exerted herself with all her superabundant good humor to amuse and distract him. But for once she was unsuccessful, and as the meal proceeded his brown study increased. After dinner, as usual when they were alone, they went up to his "den," the custom being for him to smoke a cigar while she glanced over the evening papers, and read to him what seemed to be of interest. As she stood leaning negligently against the mantelpiece she was surprised to notice that he did not settle himself in his usual chair. He came up to her instead, and she felt a sudden knocking at the heart as her uplifted eyes met his.
"How long has this been going on?" he demanded in a low voice.
"What do you mean, Papa?"
He paused as though to control himself.--She knew very well what he meant, and shivers ran down her back.