"'Mein Kind, wir waren Kinder.'"
She shut her eyes. She wanted nothing but his voice. His voice was alive.
It remembered. It hadn't grown old and tired. "My child, we once were
children, two children happy and small; we crept in the little hen-house
and hid ourselves under the straw."
"Kikeriküh! sie glaubten
Es wäre Hahnen geschrei."
"...It's all very well, Mary, I can't go on reading Heine to you for
ever. And--_après_?"
He had taken her on his knees. That happened sometimes. She kept one foot
on the floor so as not to press on him with her whole weight. And she
played with his watch chain. She liked to touch the things he wore. It
made her feel that she cared for him; it staved off the creeping,
sickening fear that came when their hands and faces touched.
"Do you know," he said, "what it will be like--afterwards?"
She began, slowly, to count the buttons of his waistcoat.
"Have you ever tried to think what it will be like?"
"Yes."
Last night, lying awake in the dark, she had tried to think. She had
thought of shoulders heaving over her, of arms holding her, of a face
looking into hers, a honey-white, beardless face, blue eyes, black
eyebrows drawn close down on to the blue. Jimmy's face, not Maurice
Jourdain's.
That was in September. October passed. She began to wonder when he would
come again.
He came on the last day of November.