Why didn’t you?
Are you afraid of me, or don’t you like me, or both?
I think you’re delicious, splendid, and I want to know.”
He shifted his position, putting one arm about her waist, pulling her close to him, looking into her eyes. With the other he held her free arm.
Suddenly he covered her mouth with his and then kissed her cheeks.
“You care for me, don’t you?
What did you mean by saying you might come, if you didn’t?”
He held her quite firm, while Aileen struggled.
It was a new sensation this—that of the other man, and this was Polk Lynde, the first individual outside of Cowperwood to whom she had ever felt drawn.
But now, here, in her own room—and it was within the range of possibilities that Cowperwood might return or the servants enter.
“Oh, but think what you are doing,” she protested, not really disturbed as yet as to the outcome of the contest with him, and feeling as though he were merely trying to make her be sweet to him without intending anything more at present—“here in my own room!
Really, you’re not the man I thought you were at all, if you don’t instantly let me go.
Mr. Lynde! Mr. Lynde!” (He had bent over and was kissing her).
“Oh, you shouldn’t do this!
Really!
I—I said I might come, but that was far from doing it. And to have you come here and take advantage of me in this way! I think you’re horrid.
If I ever had any interest in you, it is quite dead now, I can assure you.
Unless you let me go at once, I give you my word I will never see you any more.
I won’t! Really, I won’t!
I mean it!
Oh, please let me go!
I’ll scream, I tell you! I’ll never see you again after this day!
Oh—” It was an intense but useless struggle.
Coming home one evening about a week later, Cowperwood found Aileen humming cheerfully, and yet also in a seemingly deep and reflective mood.
She was just completing an evening toilet, and looked young and colorful—quite her avid, seeking self of earlier days.
“Well,” he asked, cheerfully, “how have things gone to-day?”
Aileen, feeling somehow, as one will on occasions, that if she had done wrong she was justified and that sometime because of this she might even win Cowperwood back, felt somewhat kindlier toward him.
“Oh, very well,” she replied.
“I stopped in at the Hoecksemas’ this afternoon for a little while.
They’re going to Mexico in November.
She has the darlingest new basket-carriage—if she only looked like anything when she rode in it.
Etta is getting ready to enter Bryn Mawr. She is all fussed up about leaving her dog and cat.
Then I went down to one of Lane Cross’s receptions, and over to Merrill’s”—she was referring to the great store—“and home.
I saw Taylor Lord and Polk Lynde together in Wabash Avenue.”
“Polk Lynde?” commented Cowperwood.
“Is he interesting?”
“Yes, he is,” replied Aileen.
“I never met a man with such perfect manners.
He’s so fascinating.
He’s just like a boy, and yet, Heaven knows, he seems to have had enough worldly experience.”
“So I’ve heard,” commented Cowperwood.
“Wasn’t he the one that was mixed up in that Carmen Torriba case here a few years ago?” Cowperwood was referring to the matter of a Spanish dancer traveling in America with whom Lynde had been apparently desperately in love.
“Oh yes,” replied Aileen, maliciously; “but that oughtn’t to make any difference to you.
He’s charming, anyhow.
I like him.”
“I didn’t say it did, did I?
You don’t object to my mentioning a mere incident?”
“Oh, I know about the incident,” replied Aileen, jestingly.
“I know you.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked, studying her face.