And still she seemed to be considering: Was it or was it not worth while?
"For God's sake don't say you're going to make conditions. There really isn't time for it. You can think what you like and say what you like and do what you like, and wear anything--wear a busby--I shan't care if you'll only marry me."
"Yes. That's the way you go on. And yet you don't, say you love me. You never have said it. You--you're leaving me to do all that."
"Why--what else have I been doing for seven years? Nine years--ten years?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all. You just seem to think that I can go off and get married to a man without knowing whether he cares for me or not.
"And now it's too late. My hands are all dirty. So's my face--filthy--you mustn't--"
"I don't care. They're your hands. It's your face. I don't care."
The chin-strap, the absurd chin-strap, fretted his mouth. He laughed. He said, "She takes her hat off when she goes into a scrimmage, and she keeps it on now!"
She loosened the strap, laughing, and threw her hat, the hat of a Canadian trooper, on to the floor. His mouth moved over her face, over her hair, pressing hard into their softness; his arms clasped her shoulders; they slipped to her waist; he strained her slender body fast to him, straight against his own straightness, till the passion and the youth she had denied and destroyed shook her.
He said to himself, "She shall come alive. She shall feel. She shall want me. I'll make her. I should have thought of this ten years ago."