Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/139

 Jones, something brief and explosive that gripped you one moment, bent you to its uses, then left you to snap back, if you could, to your original state. Most married people, he said, were like cats tied together by their tails and thrown over a clothes line, clawing at each other's vitals. Marriage, he said, if congenial, reduces the erstwhile lovers to a brother and sister relationship which makes desire seem incestuous. Desire, he said, goes readily towards the strange and balks at the habitual. Love, he said, 'Hearth and Home' love, mawkish love, possibly existed in New England, but it was a thing of which he knew nothing. Finding his companion's hand in the layers of furs, he pressed it.

The girl grew cold with a chill that came from within and worked out to meet the icy air whistling against the buffalo robes. What had he said? In her heart she had always known that he wanted no more of her love than this. She had always really known that he had no desire to marry her, nor any woman. 'I must go back,' she thought.

Then, feeling his warm body pressed against her side, a flood of heat followed the chill and she was devastated with the desire to be kissed and caressed by this man who had no morals and who did not understand love. Nor did she herself love him as she had expected some day to love a man. The bonds which held her to him were at once more primitive, more binding, and lighter.

She told herself passionately to look at him again and see for herself that he had no greater charm than