I purposely
refused to let you to, when you wanted to go away the first
time,--partly on the kid's account, partly because I could hardly bear
to let you go. Mostly because I wanted to make him boil over and show
his teeth, on the chance that you'd be able to size him up.
"You see, I knew him from the ground up. I knew that nothing would
afford him a keener pleasure than to take away from me a woman I cared
for, and that nothing would make him squirm more than for me to
check-mate him. That day I cuffed him and choked him on the Point really
started him properly. After that, you--as something to be desired and
possessed--ran second to his feeling against me. He was bound to try and
play even, regardless of you. When he precipitated that row on the Tyee,
I knew it was going to be a fight for my financial life--for my own
life, if he ever got me foul. And it was not a thing I could talk about
to you, in your state of mind, then. You were through with me.
Regardless of him, you were getting farther and farther away from me. I
had a long time to realize that fully. You had a grudge against life,
and it was sort of crystallizing on me. You never kissed me once in all
those two years like you kissed me just now."
She pulled his head down and kissed him again.
"So that I wasn't restraining you with any hope for my own advantage,"
he went on. "There was the kid, and there was you. I wanted to put a
brake on you, to make you go slow. You're a complex individual, Stella.
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