“Do you think, if you hadn’t been nicer, and cleaner and everything, I’d let you kiss me?” She jumped up and away.
He liked her intimacy. It flattered him. He did not wish to tell her of his work at Mr. Devitt’s, and how easily he might have stayed there long and forever. And she liked his reticence, feeling its power. She liked the veiled promise of pleasure and strength that he suffused from all of his big being. It frightened her.
She was seated as far away from him as she could manage. Her bare elbows were on her knees and her chin was cupped in her hands. The pressure upward faintly distorted her soft mouth: one corner was open and two teeth bit white and hard against the lip. Her throat tremored with her amusement; the rose mesh of her waist fell forward in suggestion of the warm swell of her girlish bosom. David believed that she was purring. He saw her teeth biting their hardness into the blush of her lips: he saw how smooth and round her arm was. He said:
“You let me kiss you because I’ve a right to.” He was aware of the retreat in his words. “...because we’re cousins.”
She merely lifted her face a bit, as if he were stirring away. “All right. We’re going to play now that we are not cousins. We are just you and me, do you hear? So you mayn’t kiss me anymore.”
Already he was forward. The game started. The goal was implicit with them both. In a fortnight’s time, David had won his kiss. He was very sure that Lois was very lovely: he was almost sure that she did not return his kisses because he was unworthy....
David sat at his long table in the office, lost in a maze of figures which gave a different answer each time he questioned them. He was languidly certain the figures were laughing at him, held him in contempt. About him yellow pine, hard human bustle. He looked up through the mist of his discomfort; he saw above him a slender and sleek young man with a smile on thick lips.
“My name is Duer Tibbetts. You’re Markand, aren’t you?”
David was not sure whether to keep his seat. He was twisted in indecision.
“I am a cousin of your aunt, I work over there under Mr. Herding in the Cashier’s Office. I have just come back from two weeks in Virginia. I was told to look you up and make you feel at home.”