LITMIR.BIZ

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with the eyes of a stranger. He perceived that he had wounded her in some way which he did not understand, and which perhaps she did not want him to understand.

      “What is the matter with you?” he repeated.

      “Why must you do that every time you meet me?”

      “ ‘Every time I meet you’ is an exaggeration,” said Mr. Warburton. “It’s really very seldom that I get the opportunity. But if you really and truly don’t like it——”

      “Of course I don’t like it! You know I don’t like it!”

      “Well, well! Then let’s say no more about it,” said Mr. Warburton generously. “Sit down, and we’ll change the subject.”

      He was totally devoid of shame. It was perhaps his most outstanding characteristic. Having attempted to seduce her, and failed, he was quite willing to go on with the conversation as though nothing whatever had happened.

      “I’m going home at once,” said Dorothy. “I can’t stay here any longer.”

      “Oh, nonsense! Sit down and forget about it. We’ll talk of moral theology, or cathedral architecture, or the Girl Guides’ cooking classes, or anything you choose. Think how bored I shall be all alone if you go home at this hour.”

      But Dorothy persisted, and there was an argument. Even if it had not been his intention to make love to her—and whatever he might promise he would certainly begin again in a few minutes if she did not go—Mr. Warburton would have pressed her to stay, for, like all thoroughly idle people, he had a horror of going to bed and no conception of the value of time. He would, if you let him, keep you talking till three or four in the morning. Even when Dorothy finally escaped, he walked beside her down the moonlit drive, still talking voluminously and with such perfect good humour that she found it impossible to be angry with him any longer.

      “I’m leaving first thing to-morrow,” he told her as they reached the gate. “I’m going to take the car to town and pick up the kids—the bastards, you know—and we’re leaving for France the next day. I’m not certain where we shall go after that; eastern Europe, perhaps. Prague, Vienna, Bucharest.”

      “How nice,” said Dorothy.

      Mr. Warburton, with an adroitness surprising in so large and stout a man, had manœuvred himself between Dorothy and the gate.

      “I shall be away six months or more,” he said. “And of course I needn’t ask, before so long a parting, whether you want to kiss me good-bye?”

      Before she knew what he was doing he had put his arm about her and drawn her against him. She drew back—too late; he kissed her on the cheek—would have kissed her on the mouth if she had not turned her head away in time. She struggled in his arms, violently and for a moment helplessly.

      “Oh, let me go!” she cried. “Do let me go!”

      “I believe I pointed out before,” said Mr. Warburton, holding her easily against him, “that I don’t want to let you go.”

      “But we’re standing right in front of Mrs. Semprill’s window! She’ll see us absolutely for certain!”

      “Oh, good God! So she will!” said Mr. Warburton. “I was forgetting.”

      Impressed by this argument, as he would not have been by any other, he let Dorothy go. She promptly put the gate between Mr. Warburton and herself. He, meanwhile, was scrutinising Mrs. Semprill’s windows.

      “I can’t see a light anywhere,” he said finally. “With any luck the blasted hag hasn’t seen us.”

      “Good-bye,” said Dorothy briefly. “This time I really must go. Remember me to the children.”

      With this she made off as fast as she could go without actually running, to get out of his reach before he should attempt to kiss her again.

      Even as she did so a sound checked her for an instant—the unmistakable bang of a window shutting, somewhere in Mrs. Semprill’s house. Could Mrs. Semprill have been watching them after all? But (reflected Dorothy) of course she had been watching them! What else could you expect? You could hardly imagine Mrs. Semprill missing such a scene as that. And if she had been watching them, undoubtedly the story would be all over the town to-morrow morning, and it would lose nothing in the telling. But this thought, sinister though it was, did no more than flit momentarily through Dorothy’s mind as she hurried down the road.

      When she was well out of sight of Mr. Warburton’s house she stopped, took out her handkerchief and scrubbed the place on her cheek where he had kissed her. She scrubbed it vigorously enough to bring the blood into her cheek. It was not until she had quite rubbed out the imaginary stain which his lips had left there that she walked on again.

      What he had done had upset her. Even now her heart was knocking and fluttering uncomfortably. I can’t bear that kind of thing! she repeated to herself several times over. And unfortunately this was no more than the literal truth; she really could not bear it. To be kissed or fondled by a man—to feel heavy male arms about her and thick male lips bearing down upon her own—was terrifying and repulsive to her. Even in memory or imagination it made her wince. It was her especial secret, the especial, incurable disability that she carried through life.

      If only they would leave you alone! she thought as she walked onwards a little more slowly. That was how she put it to herself habitually—“If only they would leave you alone!” For it was not that in other ways she disliked men. On the contrary, she liked them better than women. Part of Mr. Warburton’s hold over her was in the fact that he was a man and had the careless good humour and the intellectual largeness that women so seldom have. But why couldn’t they leave you alone? Why did they always have to kiss you and maul you about? They were dreadful when they kissed you—dreadful and a little disgusting, like some large, furry beast that rubs itself against you, all too friendly and yet liable to turn dangerous at any moment. And beyond their kissing and mauling there lay always the suggestion of those other, monstrous things (“all that” was her name for them) of which she could hardly even bear to think.

      Of course, she had had her share, and rather more than her share, of casual attention from men. She was just pretty enough, and just plain enough, to be the kind of girl that men habitually pester. For when a man wants a little casual amusement, he usually picks out a girl who is not too pretty. Pretty girls (so he reasons) are spoilt and therefore capricious; but plain girls are easy game. And even if you are a clergyman’s daughter, even if you live in a town like Knype Hill and spend almost your entire life in parish work, you don’t altogether escape pursuit. Dorothy was all too used to it—all too used to the fattish middle-aged men, with their fishily hopeful eyes, who slowed down their cars when you passed them on the road, or who manœuvred an introduction and then began pinching your elbow about ten minutes afterwards. Men of all descriptions. Even a clergyman, on one occasion—a bishop’s chaplain, he was. . . .

      But the trouble was that it was not better, but oh! infinitely worse when they were the right kind of man and the advances they made you were honourable. Her mind slipped backwards five years, to Francis Moon, curate in those days at St. Wedekind’s in Millborough. Dear Francis! How gladly would she have married him if only it had not been for all that! Over and over again he had asked her to marry him, and of course she had had to say No; and, equally of course, he had never known why. Impossible to tell him why. And then he had gone away, and only a year later had died so irrelevantly of pneumonia. She whispered a prayer for his soul, momentarily forgetting that her father did not really approve of prayers for the dead, and then, with an effort, pushed the memory aside. Ah, better not to think of it again! It hurt her in her breast to think of it.

      She could never marry, she had decided long ago upon that. Even when she was a child she had known it. Nothing would ever overcome her horror of all that—at the very thought of it something within her seemed to shrink and freeze. And of course, in a sense she did not want to overcome it. For, like all abnormal people, she was not fully aware that she was abnormal.

      And yet, though her sexual coldness seemed to her natural and

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