"You almost make me want to weep," she whispered.
He placed his great arm about her shoulder and drew her slight form to him. Before she knew what was happening his coarse lips were pressed against hers. She made no effort to repulse him. She was pleased. She had brought him to her feet and she was glad. There was a certain rugged strength about him which she found not distasteful, an animal attraction. Again and again he kissed her. She was almost breathless. It was seldom that she was so stirred.
"Mary," he whispered, "would you like to go home with me?" He was careful not to offer marriage although he was prepared to enter into such an arrangement as a final resource if need be. But marriage had lost all appeal for him. He didn't want to be legally responsible for a woman after he had grown tired of her. One did not keep a dog after it had ceased to attract one as a pet.
Mary was cognizant of the fact that he was not buffering marriage. It did not trouble her particularly. She would prefer to belong to all men rather than to one. And even though she chose to be true to one man for awhile, marriage was too definite a period to freedom to attract her. That night Yekial Meigs begged to be taken up to her room. But she refused. She knew that if he once possessed her, she might cease to be as alluring to him. Passion appeased is passion on the wane.
That night she was a sentimentalist. She longed for a place that she could really call home. She could not withstand the allure of that open fire. Even though it was August and far from cool, the thought of that open fire made her homesick.
In the morning she met Yekial Meigs at the railroad station. They were going to Fort Wayne. Once more she was setting off on a honeymoon with a man to whom she intended to be true. She would be his wife as faithfully as though they were married. She looked forward to taking charge of a house, to doing the cooking and sewing. Perhaps it appealed to her because she had never tried it. She was succumbing to the glamour of a home which strangely enough was possessed of very little glamour.
Yekial Meigs could not have been more attentive to her.
41
