In fact," she went on, "I think that I should
have had more to forgive if you had not."
He was puzzled and yet encouraged. She was always bewildering him
by her sudden changes from the woman of sober thoughtfulness to
the woman of feeling, the woman eager to give, eager to receive.
At that moment it seemed as though her sex possessed her to the
exclusion of everything outside. Her eyes were soft and filled
with the desire of love, her lips sweet and tremulous. She had
suddenly created a new atmosphere around her, an atmosphere of
bewildering and passionate femininity.
"Wont you tell me, please, what you mean?" he begged.
"Isn't it clear?" she answered, very softly but with a suspicion
of scorn in her low tones. "You kissed me because I deliberately
invited it. I know that quite well. My anger--and I have been
angry about it--is with myself."
He was a little taken aback. Her perfect naturalness was
disarming, a little confusing.
"You certainly did seem provocative," he confessed, "but I ought
to have remembered."
"You are very stupid," she sighed. "I deliberately invited your
embrace. Your withholding it would simply have added to my
humiliation. I am furious with myself, simply because, although I
have lived a great part of my life with men, on equal terms with
them, working with them, playing with them, seeing more of them at
all times than of my own sex, such a thing has never happened to
me before."
"I felt that," he said simply.
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