"I? Nothing."
"You imply that I have been unjust toward you."
"Oh no!"
"And I can't let you go till you prove it."
"Prove to a woman that--Will you let me pass?"
"No!" She spread her slender arms across the doorway.
"Oh, very well!" Jeff took her hands and put them both in the hold of one
of his large, strong bands. Then, with the contact, it came to him, from
a varied experience of girls in his rustic past, that this young lady,
who was nothing but a girl after all, was playing her comedy with a
certain purpose, however little she might know it or own it. He put his
other large, strong hand upon her waist, and pulled her to him and kissed
her. Another sort of man, no matter what he had believed of her, would
have felt his act a sacrilege then and there. Jeff only knew that she had
not made the faintest straggle against him; she had even trembled toward
him, and he brutally exulted in the belief that he had done what she
wished, whether it was what she meant or not.
She, for her part, realized that she had been kissed as once she had
happened to see one of the maids kissed by the grocer's boy at the
basement door. In an instant this man had abolished all her defences of
family, of society, of personality, and put himself on a level with her
in the most sacred things of life. Her mind grasped the fact and she
realized it intellectually, while as yet all her emotions seemed
paralyzed. She did not know whether she resented it as an abominable
outrage or not; whether she hated the man for it or not. But perhaps he
was in love with her, and his love overpowered him; in that case she
could forgive him, if she were in love with him. She asked herself
whether she was, and whether she had betrayed herself to him so that he
was somehow warranted in what he did. She wondered if another sort of man
would have done it, a gentleman, who believed she was in love with him.
She wondered if she were as much shocked as she was astonished. She knew
that there was everything in the situation to make the fact shocking, but
she got no distinct reply from her jarred consciousness.
It ought to be known, and known at once; she ought to tell her brother,
as soon as she saw him; she thought of telling her aunt, and she fancied
having to shout the affair into her ear, and having to repeat, "He kissed
me! Don't you understand? Kissed me!" Then she reflected with a start
that she could never tell any one, that in the midst of her world she was
alone in relation to this; she was as helpless and friendless as the
poorest and lowliest girl could be. She was more so, for if she were like
the maid whom the grocer's boy kissed she would be of an order of things
in which she could advise with some one else who had been kissed; and she
would know what to feel.
She asked herself whether she was at all moved at heart; till now it
seemed to her that it had not been different with her toward him from
what it had been toward all the other men whose meaning she would have
liked to find out. She had not in the least respected them, and she did
not respect him; but if it happened because he was overcome by his love
for her, and could not help it, then perhaps she must forgive him whether
she cared for him or not.
These ideas presented themselves with the simultaneity of things in a
dream in that instant when she lingered helplessly in his hold, and she
even wondered if by any chance Andrew had seen them; but she heard his
step on the floor below; and at the same time it appeared to her that she
must be in love with this man if she did not resent what he had done.