“I want you now.”
“I want to be engaged a long time, Louis. We have so much to learn about each other.”
He thought that rather childish. But whatever had been his motive in the beginning, he was desperately in love with her by that time, and because of that he frightened her sometimes. He was less sure of himself, too, even after she had accepted him, and to prove his continued dominance over her he would bully her.
“Come here,” he would say, from the hearth rug, or by the window.
“Certainly not.”
“Come here.”
Sometimes she went, to be smothered in his hot embrace; sometimes she did not.
But her infatuation persisted, although there were times when his inordinate vitality and his caresses gave her a sense of physical weariness, times when sheer contact revolted her. He seemed always to want to touch her. Fastidiously reared, taught a sort of aloofness from childhood, Lily found herself wondering if all men in love were like that, always having to be held off.