“Thank you,” said my cousin, and moved a little away from me.
She began to talk about friendship, and lost her thread and forgot the
little electric stress between us in a rather meandering analysis of her
principal girl friends.
But afterwards she resumed her purpose.
I went to bed that night with one proposition overshadowing everything
else in my mind, namely, that kissing my cousin Sybil was a difficult,
but not impossible, achievement. I do not recall any shadow of a doubt
whether on the whole it was worth doing. The thing had come into my
existence, disturbing and interrupting its flow exactly as a fever does.
Sybil had infected me with herself.
The next day matters came to a crisis in the little upstairs
sitting-room which had been assigned me as a study during my visit.
I was working up there, or rather trying to work in spite of the
outrageous capering of some very primitive elements in my brain, when
she came up to me, under a transparent pretext of looking for a book.
I turned round and then got up at the sight of her. I quite forget what
our conversation was about, but I know she led me to believe I might
kiss her. Then when I attempted to do so she averted her face.
“How COULD you?” she said; “I didn't mean that!”
That remained the state of our relations for two days. I developed a
growing irritation with and resentment against cousin Sybil, combined
with an intense desire to get that kiss for which I hungered and
thirsted. Cousin Sybil went about in the happy persuasion that I was
madly in love with her, and her game, so far as she was concerned,
was played and won. It wasn't until I had fretted for two days that
I realised that I was being used for the commonest form of excitement
possible to a commonplace girl; that dozens perhaps of young men had
played the part of Tantalus at cousin Sybil's lips. I walked about my
room at nights, damning her and calling her by terms which on the whole
she rather deserved, while Sybil went to sleep pitying “poor old Dick!”
“Damn it!” I said, “I WILL be equal with you.”
But I never did equalise the disadvantage, and perhaps it's as well, for
I fancy that sort of revenge cuts both people too much for a rational
man to seek it....
“Why are men so silly?” said cousin Sybil next morning, wriggling back
with down-bent head to release herself from what should have been a
compelling embrace.
“Confound it!” I said with a flash of clear vision. “You STARTED this
game.”
“Oh!”
She stood back against a hedge of roses, a little flushed and excited
and interested, and ready for the delightful defensive if I should renew
my attack.
“Beastly hot for scuffling,” I said, white with anger. “I don't know
whether I'm so keen on kissing you, Sybil, after all. I just thought you
wanted me to.”