Page:Dangerous Business (1927).pdf/116

 heart beats in her white, warm body. "It's what has come down to you; it's what is put up to you," at last he said. "Something like honor."

"What makes honor for you?"

He could not think, holding her; with her heart beating, beating against his. He had never imagined, when he had married her, this. He shut his eyes but it only increased the intoxication of the thump, thump, thump of their hearts together, hers hurrying, hurrying and now his after it. He lost his breath and, in order to breathe again, he let her go, releasing her to her crimson couch, where she lay, breathless like him, and looking up at him.

"You'd like," Lida gibed, "to love me. You're my sort, inside you. I felt it a second ago. You'd like to go with me to Levuka; but I know you won't . . . yet . . . because, because . . ."

"Because why, Lida?"

"You don't dare," she taunted him. "You don't dare even to love me yet. But you'd like to let go and love me."

"You were born a barbarian, Lida," he said.

"Thank God for that. What d'you feel you were born to be? A merchant of Chicago like your friends the Mettens?"

With a start, he recollected them and that he had not mentioned to her that Metten was a buyer, as Nucast had been. Now he told her, but without referring to Nucast.

"Yes," said Lida. "Mr. Metten gave your papa a business of four hundred and forty-five thousand dollars last year." Plainly it was an indirect quotation. "He has a bigger business this year; and he likes you very much.