There was something about Steve she did not entirely like, something in him that seemed to be saying, be careful, don’t hurt me or I’ll run. That was the impression she got, though she didn’t put it into words; what she knew was that she was always a little ill at ease with him. On the other hand there was something pleasing in his quiet manner, his courtesy in little things, his disinclination to take anything for granted, so that she enjoyed being with him more than with Gilstairs, for instance, who apparently proceeded on the theory that a slight initial propulsion is all that is required for the development of an emotional avalanche. Although this did not frighten Lora it annoyed her; after two experiments she let him apply his theory elsewhere.
What was Steve afraid of, she wondered. He wasn’t exactly shy, she couldn’t call him timid, but when she was with him she was always aware of a sense of fragility, of a necessity to avoid with more than ordinary care the danger of intrusion into forbidden places. There was nothing concrete about it; his warnings were conveyed so subtly that it was impossible to put your finger on one and say, why did he do that? In fact, as Lora grew to know him better she became fairly persuaded that it was all her imagination.
He offered no caresses or solicitations, but as time went on he showed a growing tendency to talk intimately about himself. Lora, he said, was the only girl he had ever known with whom he felt he could talk freely. He stated categorically that he was sexually a virgin, using that word, virgin, which Lora thought absurd and amusing. He had often thought of marriage, but there had been two obstacles: first, no girl had ever sufficiently attracted him; and second, his mother. Was she so opposed to it, Lora asked, because his pause seemed to invite a question. Oh, no, by no means, not at all, he replied; but it had always seemed to him that one of the most important functions of a mother was to set a standard by which other girls and women could be measured, and he had the fortune, good or bad, to have thus acquired a standard that was all but unattainable. His mother had faults of course, for instance she was a little too tolerant of masculine peccadilloes among friends and acquaintances, but doubtless without a slight blemish here and there she would have been unendurable in her perfection. His father was dead, Lora somehow supposed, but it appeared not; he was in fact very much alive, a professor in a technical college who had made quite a name for himself in a minor sort of way. Brothers or sisters? No. None. He returned to marriage. It was really terrifying, he said, to think of marriage. Not on account of the involvement of sex, not at all; though he had never experienced it he had no reason to suppose that he was any different from other men in that respect, and he had yet to learn that any healthy man had died of it; no, the trouble with marriage was its finality; in spite of divorce laws it was in its nature irrevocable. Lora asked what about children, and he looked at her as if he had never heard of such a thing; she had a queer feeling that he was going to begin talking about storks. But it appeared that in connection with this subject children simply had never occurred to him; he seemed quite startled and upset, as if an Einstein had introduced a new and disturbing element into his most searching and abstruse calculations.
He returned to the topic on various occasions. He often referred, as to something which others might deprecate but which he was prepared to defend and justify, to his own lack of experience with sex; and one day he said to her point-blank:
“Of course I don’t suppose you’ve had any either.”
At last he’s asked it, Lora thought; he’s been wanting to know that for three months.
“Yes,” she replied calmly and readily, “I have.”
“Oh,” was all he said. She could see his suddenly flushed face in the bright glare of a streetlight beside which they had stopped; they were on their way home from a Sunday at one of the Long Island beaches and were now in a solid endless line of traffic near the approach to Queensboro Bridge. The smell and noise and confusion engulfed them.
After a while he spoke again:
“I mean really. You know, really.”
“I know. Yes, I have.”
“Often?”
She laughed at him, without replying.
“Of course it’s none of my business,” he said after a silence. “But I’ve told you all about myself, you know it’s not just curiosity. No one has more respect for women than I have. You might think I might respect you less, but I certainly would not. I don’t put myself up to judge anybody, especially if I don’t know all the circumstances. My mother taught me that, she’s more tolerant than I am even. I don’t respect you a bit less.”
After another long silence, a little island of silence in the midst of the bridge’s uproar, he asked suddenly:
“Was it one of the fellows at the office?”
This is beginning to get irritating, thought Lora, this is plenty for one day. “No, it wasn’t,” she said shortly. “And if you don’t mind I’d rather talk of something else.”
“All right.” After another pause he resumed, as they swung into Sixtieth Street, “I do want to be sure though that you don’t misunderstand my — my motives. With me it isn’t a matter of respect at all, it’s just ignorance. There doesn’t seem to me to be anything — well — unclean about it. I won’t talk about it any more.”
A few days later, at lunch — for he had recently acquired the habit of asking her several times a week to lunch with him — he announced that the relation of lover and mistress appeared to him the ideal solution of the problem of sex. It certainly was capable of being a perfectly honorable relation, the French had proved that, he asserted; and added with a smile that while he was in no position to set himself up as an authority still he had thought about it a lot and it seemed to him amply demonstrable. The main thing was mutual respect, the circumstances had to be such that there could be no question about that. Didn’t Lora agree with him? Of course. Probably half the girls in the office were no better than they should be — that is, he explained hastily, from the conventional viewpoint. And the men, not one of them was pure, absolutely not one. You could tell from the way they talked. As for the physical experience, that was to be expected, even a reputable doctor would admit that the physical experience was healthy and natural and in a way inevitable; but the way they talked was disgusting. Of course they didn’t all have mistresses; the married ones had wives, which was just as good for those who were built that way; and many of the others were engaged in a sort of haphazard prowling and ambushing which to him seemed inhuman and indefensible.
At the end, after he had paid the check, not looking at Lora but busy ostentatiously with counting his change and getting it put away, he asked her to dine with him the following evening. She replied that he knew very well she couldn’t; what about her school?
“Saturday then,” he said, still not looking at her.
“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “I’d counted on sewing; I’ve been out so much recently I’ve nothing fit to wear. I think I’d better not.”
“I’d love to buy you a dress,” he declared.
She stared at him, and he blushed to his ears, but he said manfully:
“Please come Saturday.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
X
There was a little entrance hall, a kitchen and bath, a medium-sized living- and eating-room with two windows both at one end, and a small bedroom with one window in the rear and one on the side court. The place had been recently remodelled and was bright with new plaster and fittings, but the furniture was dismal, nondescript, and — not to be offensive about it — inharmonious. The curtains particularly were soiled and bedraggled, and one of the first things Lora did after she moved in was to take them down and send them to the laundry. Whereupon the colors in the borders ran so outrageously that they were worse if anything than before, and she had to get new ones after all. On a Saturday afternoon Steve went with her to a department store to help select the material; he fancied his taste in such matters.