“I— Oh yes, I do, I do.”
“I like your name,” he said, simply.
“Antoinette.”
And then, pulling her to him, he slipped his arm about her waist.
She was frightened, numb, and then suddenly, not so much from shame as shock, tears rushed to her eyes.
She turned and put her hand on the desk and hung her head and sobbed.
“Why, Antoinette,” he asked, gently, bending over her, “are you so much unused to the world?
I thought you said you loved me.
Do you want me to forget all this and go on as before?
I can, of course, if you can, you know.”
He knew that she loved him, wanted him.
She heard him plainly enough, shaking.
“Do you?” he said, after a time, giving her moments in which to recover.
“Oh, let me cry!” she recovered herself sufficiently to say, quite wildly.
“I don’t know why I’m crying.
It’s just because I’m nervous, I suppose.
Please don’t mind me now.”
“Antoinette,” he repeated, “look at me! Will you stop?”
“Oh no, not now.
My eyes are so bad.”
“Antoinette! Come, look!” He put his hand under her chin. “See, I’m not so terrible.”
“Oh,” she said, when her eyes met his again,
“I—” And then she folded her arms against his breast while he petted her hand and held her close.
“I’m not so bad, Antoinette. It’s you as much as it is me.
You do love me, then?”
“Yes, yes—oh yes!”
“And you don’t mind?”
“No.
It’s all so strange.”
Her face was hidden.
“Kiss me, then.”
She put up her lips and slipped her arms about him.
He held her close.
He tried teasingly to make her say why she cried, thinking the while of what Aileen or Rita would think if they knew, but she would not at first—admitting later that it was a sense of evil.
Curiously she also thought of Aileen, and how, on occasion, she had seen her sweep in and out.
Now she was sharing with her (the dashing Mrs. Cowperwood, so vain and superior) the wonder of his affection.
Strange as it may seem, she looked on it now as rather an honor.
She had risen in her own estimation—her sense of life and power.
Now, more than ever before, she knew something of life because she knew something of love and passion.
The future seemed tremulous with promise.
She went back to her machine after a while, thinking of this.
What would it all come to? she wondered, wildly.
You could not have told by her eyes that she had been crying. Instead, a rich glow in her brown cheeks heightened her beauty.
No disturbing sense of Aileen was involved with all this.
Antoinette was of the newer order that was beginning to privately question ethics and morals.
She had a right to her life, lead where it would. And to what it would bring her.
The feel of Cowperwood’s lips was still fresh on hers.
What would the future reveal to her now? What?
Chapter XVII. An Overture to Conflict
The result of this understanding was not so important to Cowperwood as it was to Antoinette.