If she expected pity—was she to get it thus? Duplessis had no pity to bestow.
“It’s not the first time we have met here, is it?” Extraordinary, that to his screwing her nerves responded so faithfully.
“There should never have been a time,” she said, and meant it. It was part of his luxury to be sure that she felt in the wrong.
“Why not?” he probed her airily. “If two people want to talk to each other, what else are they to do? And there’s no doubt about our needs, I suppose?”
She had nothing to say to that—she was discretion itself; but the effect of her frugality was to bring him closer to where she sat.
“Do you care to keep my book?”—and before she could answer—“Well, then, keep it,” he said. “I’ll come up to-morrow and write your name in it, and mine too. Would you like that? Tell me, child.”
But as she hung her head and had no words, he had to tell himself. His arm went about her; he could feel her heart. He drew her to him, and her head lay on his breast. “That’s well,” he said, “that’s as it should always be. You are made to be captured.”
He had what he wanted of her after that, that sense of fluttering under the hand, of throbbing response to stroking phrases of which an epicure of the sort is never weary. With power grew the lust of power; if he could have made her see white black it would have gratified him. He told her that he must soon go to London, and made her lie the closer; he told her that he loved her, and made her sigh and cling. He told her that she was that which indeed she was not—a lover, his “little lover”—and felt the sweet flattery steal over her when she thrilled to it as the earth to a beam of the sun. Ravished by the thought of what he had to his hand, he pressed her, and bent over her where she crouched. “Mary,” he whispered as he stooped. “No, no,” she said, and put up her lips. That was the way of it, the saying and doing not without a pathetic simplicity, relished by him to the full.
Exquisite little triumph! which he was too wise to repeat. He spent another twenty minutes discoursing of himself, his works, and plans. Believing her to be interested—as he was himself—he became extremely kind, forgot to be jealous of John Germain’s notice, forgot to require or exact anything from her, forgot even to be rude. Really, he parted from her with more politeness than he would have shown to one of his own class—say, to Miss de Speyne. He sought no more favours. “I shall see you in the distance to-morrow, perhaps. I play cricket for Soames—I think he wants me. I don’t forget the book, you may be sure. Good night.”
It was nine o’clock before he reached his mother’s house, and by that time Miss Middleham’s person and his pleasure in it were absorbed into the vague physical comfort which a healthy young man feels in changing his clothes. They gave a zest to his bath and clean linen, quickened his brains, and strung him to activity of a sort. He sketched out an article for the weekly review which helped to support him, chaffed Soames, and comfortably dressed himself for the Rectory. There, as we know, he prevaricated, but there also he received some impressions which caused the image of Mary Middleham to visit him in the watches of the night.