“Do you really?”
She swooped on him, sat on the arm of his chair.
He hated the emotional drain of having to appear fond of her.
He stroked her hand, smiled up at her dutifully, and sank back.
“George, I wonder if you really like me at all?”
“Course I do, silly.”
“Do you really, precious?
Do you care a bit?”
“Why certainly!
You don’t suppose I’d be here if I didn’t!”
“Now see here, young man, I won’t have you speaking to me in that huffy way!”
“I didn’t mean to sound huffy.
I just—” In injured and rather childish tones: “Gosh almighty, it makes me tired the way everybody says I sound huffy when I just talk natural!
Do they expect me to sing it or something?”
“Who do you mean by ‘everybody’?
How many other ladies have you been consoling?”
“Look here now, I won’t have this hinting!”
Humbly:
“I know, dear.
I was only teasing.
I know it didn’t mean to talk huffy—it was just tired.
Forgive bad Tanis.
But say you love me, say it!”
“I love you.... Course I do.”
“Yes, you do!” cynically. “Oh, darling, I don’t mean to be rude but—I get so lonely.
I feel so useless.
Nobody needs me, nothing I can do for anybody.
And you know, dear, I’m so active—I could be if there was something to do.
And I am young, aren’t I!
I’m not an old thing!
I’m not old and stupid, am I?”
He had to assure her.
She stroked his hair, and he had to look pleased under that touch, the more demanding in its beguiling softness.
He was impatient.
He wanted to flee out to a hard, sure, unemotional man-world.
Through her delicate and caressing fingers she may have caught something of his shrugging distaste.
She left him—he was for the moment buoyantly relieved—she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking beseechingly up at him.
But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him.
And he saw her now as middle-aged, as beginning to be old.
Even while he detested his own thoughts, they rode him.
She was old, he winced.
Old!
He noted how the soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin, below her eyes, at the base of her wrists.
A patch of her throat had a minute roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser.
Old!
She was younger in years than himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up at him with rolling great eyes—as if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making love to him.
He fretted inwardly,
“I’m through with this asinine fooling around.
I’m going to cut her out.
She’s a darn decent nice woman, and I don’t want to hurt her, but it’ll hurt a lot less to cut her right out, like a good clean surgical operation.”