The following morning when I was due in the conservatory, my father intercepted me at the door to his booklined study. “But I'll be late for my lesson, Father, and Mr. Harwell will not approve.”
I was absolutely amazed that the Marquis was up at this hour. But he blinked not an eye. “I daresay, Clarissa, that he will neither approve nor disapprove. Now do you come into my study, daughter-your mother awaits you there as well.” Oh my God, I thought, a council of war. And what of Oliver Harwell? Why hadn't he been included? “Good morning, Mother,” I said dutifully. I felt somewhat faint, especially with respect to Harwell. I told my noble parents that I felt faint, but not on account of Harwell. At any rate, my father gave me brandy and I swallowed enough of it to cause my mother to raise both eyebrows. “Do you have a morning sickness?” she asked as I wove an unsteady course to one of the leather armchairs. “Are you suggesting that I'm pregnant, Mother?” “Clarissa!” my father said, “must you be so blunt?” “In some of our father-to-daughter conversations,” I said, “you have stressed the idea of candor.”
“Really, Mathew,” my mother said. “You know how children take things literally. How could you in this vale of tears stress the practice of candor?” “This is very much apart from the issue, Louisa,” my father said. “Oblige me by treating first things first.”
“Yes, Mathew,” she said meekly. Meekly for the moment-I knew my mother. The Marquis of Portferrans turned directly to me. “I'm afraid I'll have to be brutally candid about Oliver Harwell.” I walked over to the small table where the brandy and other alcoholic beverages were, and I poured myself another brandy. At which my mother's jaw seemed positively to loosen and become unhinged from the rest of her face. The Marquis, on the other hand, retained his aplomb as I drank a half tumbler of brandy. “Are you ready, Clarissa?” he asked kindly. “Oh, quite.” “Mr. Harwell has precipitately left.” “Precipitately, eh?” I said. “Oh.” “He had a major reason for doing so,” Mathew Quist-Hagen said, Louisa Quist-Hagen gazing narrowly at me. She had a marvelous penchant for gazing narrowly. She should have been trained to ride racing horses.
“Did he?” I said casually, my pulse sprinting like a favored filly. “He said, Mr. Harwell did, that he could not go on to tutor so beautiful a girl without becoming personally involved.”
“Oh, la,” said I. “Is that how he put it?” “Yes,” my father said. “I should think that quite flattering. But it does raise certain problems, Clarissa-such as marriage.” “Mathew,” Louisa said.
“Yes, beloved?” “Marriage is not a problem,” Louisa said.
“Quite so,” Mathew said. “The motion is tabled.” “You are not,” my mother said, “in the House of Lords.” “I am in the house,” my father said, “of women.” He said that sotto voce. It sounded as if my father were slipping a little in his regard for the female. It was obvious, too, that he had got a little weary of the games nature has us play. The odd thing about nature, my dear reader, is that if you don't play her obvious game-that of the male running about and dropping his seed indiscriminately-you play her subtle game, the male dropping his seed indiscriminately, the latter one of the most illusory of games because you drop your seed not so much selectively as habitually, in accordance with your status backdrop.
In any case, my mother said, “What did you say?” “I said, Karl Marx be damned.” “Oh,” my mother said. “I am always very suspicious of men afflicted by carbuncles-such men regard whirlwinds with great respect, since God is purported to speak from them. In any case, I detest stories in which the divinity breaks wind with a mortal-God comes off smelling like a rose while the mortal stinks to high heaven.” “Louisa,” my father said, “you are most eloquent this morning, but we seem to be straying from the major issue. We have a beautiful daughter-” “Cheers,” I said. “… who must be made more accessible than she is at present. She must have, too, a larger selection of men to choose from.” “Cheers,” I said.
“When we return to London,” my father said, “we shall have to start bringing her out and readying her for the jaws of marriage.”
I chortled. “Joys of marriage,” I said. “Damme,” said my father, snapping his fingers. “If there's anything I abhor making it's a pre-Freudian slip. I do hope that chap stays in Vienna. It's all a bit much, what with Darwin shaking us to our roots, and now this Austrian Jew has us all shaking our heads. Well, no matter.” He scratched himself under his armpits. He turned to me. “Clarissa, I'm not in the least interested in forcing you into the matrimonial state, but I do think the connubial couch would be a stabilizing factor.”
“I take that to mean,” I said, “that you think me unstable.”
“No, no,” the Marquis said. “Only that beauty can be quite unsettling. For instance, I stabilized your mother. Isn't that so, Louisa?” My mother stretched lazily, catlike, and smiled sensually. I was astonished. I had never seen her so mentally uncorseted, except for that time when, as a child, I had seen her in active coition. “I have never wanted or needed any other man,” said the Marchioness of Portferrans, “since I married your father, Clarissa.” “You gave up your manliness,” I said strangely.
“What does that mean, Clarissa?” she asked. “Well, I'm not sure myself. But I think it has to do with a female falling in love.
If she does fall in love, the rest of the world means absolutely nothing. The acropolis is in her living-room, and the primitive ceremonies of the savage natives take place in her bedroom. If the female doesn't fall in love, she can go out and explore the rest of the world without prejudice. A woman in love has reduced or completely eliminated any male elements within herself.” My mother smiled and turned to the Marquis. “We do have a most knowing daughter, do we not?” she said fondly. “Yes,” my father said. “I wish James were so deep.” “He is, Father,” I said. “But he never lets on. He thinks that depth is threatening to most people, and he has no wish to frighten anyone.” “All of which,” my father said, “deviates from the subject at hand-Clarissa. On our return to London, daughter, will you object to our bringing you out?” “I think not, Father. I'm not averse to falling in love…” Nor did I prove averse to the possibility. For the next two years my mother and father arranged entertainments for me at Hagen House in London, and I attended every ball to which I was invited. I danced all the dances-from the lancers and the polka to the Washington Post and the Sir Roger de Coverley. But though I met young men by the score, I was not smitten. None of them seemed to have the power, on the one hand, of an Oliver Harwell, or, on the other hand, the grace of my brother James, whom I saw now only at long intervals. As far as my simple lusts were concerned, they were assuaged on the most animal level by my mother's personal maid, Albertine Lassez. Albertine's hair was turning gray but she had lost none of her ferretlike vigor-and she was as blond as ever on that plump little deltoid mound formed by the juncture of the thighs. The sexual discharges Albertine afforded might never have occurred had I not been weeping copiously one winter mid-afternoon in my bedroom. The mood had been brought on by sexual frustration and by a vexatiousness of spirit from having found no young man in all of London's aristocracy to suit me. I had forgotten to shut the door completely and my sobs must have carried out to the hallway. In any event, the next thing I knew was that a warm, lightly perfumed body was lying next to mine, and that it was Albertine Lassez's vibrant contralto breathing into my ear, telling me it was pointless at my age-I was now seventeen and at the absolute youthful peak of my beauty-to be so distraught when, at the least, I should have some primitive satisfactions of a lonely winter midafternoon, that I deserved such satisfactions even if they were an homage to my loveliness from a member of the same sex. As she kept whispering these sweetnesses into my ear, she kneaded with the utmost delicacy the succulent hemispheres of my arse. My buttocks heated up and their glow descended to encompass the entire genitourinary complex… So that after a while, when Albertine petitioned me to turn over on my back and helped me do so, I was only too delighted to acquiesce even though all I could see now was the bunching-up of my many petticoats.
I felt something else, however. It was the gentlest kind of roughness at the cleft to the pass that led to the subterranean cave of caves. I muttered something unintelligible and unbuttoned my shirtwaist so that my breasts reared free. They were tumid, and my nipples turgid. I wanted to tell Albertine to wait, that we could both undress and that our respective sensations would be thereby greatly intensified. I wanted to tell her that, but the power of words seemed to have been taken away from me, that all my energy had flowed down into my yoni where it was concentrated to give the most appropriate response. I did find that I was able to move my legs-and Albertine gave a cry when I scissored them. But it was a cry of passion. Her tongue, darting ever more frantically, alternated between clitoris and vagina, and I felt their responses coalesce into a single sensation. It was all quite mechanical but nonetheless satisfying. I knew that all was expected of me was to do similarly to Albertine after she had rocketed me to the acme of the pleasure dome… My mechanical affair with Albertine might have lasted longer than it did had it not been for a ball given by the Duke and Duchess of Postings, my parents' great good friends. I recall dressing for the ball with the utmost indifference. One more wasted evening, I thought, and dutifully complied with protocol. After assisting my mother to step down from the carriage, my father handed me down and in a few moments we were being announced from the brilliantly candlelit foyer.
“The Marquis and Marchioness of Portferrans, and the Lady Clarissa Quist-Hagen.” The Duke and Duchess of Postings, both stout and jovial, greeted us warmly. Finally we proceeded through the press of the guests, many of whom familiarly addressed my mother and father and proved themselves fatuous by being taken aback by my green-eyed, black-haired beauty. But all was not lost, I thought, as long as my father with surpassing dexterity floated champagne-filled glasses from passing trays to our nimble hands and even nimbler throats-and thus we survived the time until the dancing began. I had dispensed with my dancing card, of course. I was being terribly difficult-impossible, really. I declined the prospect of dancing with this titled fop or that one, but I also denied perfectly personable young men-whose tilt of eyebrows I did not approve, whose curl of lip was too pronounced, whose face was altogether too ingenuous, or whose speech was affected far beyond necessity. My father was highly amused by my high-handedness. My mother was outraged-I had expressed this role of mine once too often. She was about to let fly when I waved my hand airily at her-my eye suddenly had become riveted-and excused myself. Standing at one of those floor-to-ceiling windows that led to a balcony overlooking the Postings' garden was a tall blond youth whose merry eye had caught mine. I resolved to reconnoitre him.
But I soon dispensed with reconnaissance. It seemed, suddenly, such a waste of time. If necessary, I would ask my brother about this lad's background, whose contemporary he was. In the meantime it was imperative that I at least learn his name. But he anticipated me.
He moved from the balcony window and intercepted me. Never have I enjoyed interception so much. I could swear it was the youth's merry eye-I had not seen such except for the last time I was with James.
James had always had a merry eye. This youth, this blond, had as much a light-struck elegance as my brother had a dark one. I had the odd sensation that I was being attracted by the light. “Hugh Kinsteares,” he murmured offhandedly, drawing abreast of me. His eyes were the color of the blue sky at twilight. “I suppose you've been told you're ravishing,” he said. I shrugged. I was abruptly bored. I was about to wander off to log another glass of champagne when he added, “But you're not ravishing at all. One profile, at any rate, is a perfect model for a hag, Lady Clarissa-has nobody given you intelligence to that effect?” I stared at Hugh Kinsteares. “Nobody,” I said. “I am the first?” I nodded gloomily. I had known my profiles the first day I could observe myself in a full-length three-panel mirror. I knew one profile was, to put it mildly, mouldy. “Beauty,” my father had said, “will always have one element or phase that is positively repellant.” Yes, I said to myself, and this Kinsteares had observed it. The bastard had already earned my respect. “Does the fact that I'm the first to observe this frighten you?” he asked. “On the contrary,” I said, “it gives me faith.” “Good,” he said. “I myself can't afford to be frightened.” That puzzled me. I was to learn, later, the ghastly significance of his sentence. “I think you also ought to know,” he said, “that I'm the san of the Earl of Lamensfirth.” “So that if we were attracted to each other,” I said, “we would require no sanctions.” Hugh Kinsteares chuckled. I liked his chuckle, I liked his blondness, I liked his slimness and I gave not a whit that he might have a bat that was too short or too long, too thick or too thin, too pustuled or too clear. He was a man, however one judged the matter, with the merriest of blue eyes and, surely, the hardest of fists. I had the distinct impression that I was falling in love. Why, I don't know. Does anyone, really? There was, simply, or complexly, a heart-catching quality to the lad, something poignant, something wonderfully free that I wanted to keep free, never to imprison it. I knew then and there that Hugh Kinsteares could do anything he liked to me-I would accept anything at all. It would be a wondrous thing, I thought, if he should wish to marry me, but just as wondrous if he simply saw me and made love to me and never said a word about engagements or marriage. I would not have cared if he had got me with child-I would have borne his bastards willingly. Yes, there seemed no doubt that I was in love. It was a fantastic sensation-I had no thought of myself-I thought only of the beloved, how blond he was, how blue-eyed as inland waters, how cynically and yet sadly poised he was, how irreverent and how much wanting to believe, how the hairs on his wrist were a silver-blond, and thus, too, the hairs on his eyebrows.
Aye, I was in love-I had begun to make inventories! We danced, of course. A hundred dances-or was it only one? You know, I don't really remember. We seemed to flow into each other, Hugh Kinsteares and I.
Simply being with each other was a dance. Stepping out on the Postings' balcony was a dance-of lad and lass. Surely, I thought, no lad and lass had been as smitten as we were. I was absolutely certain that Hugh was as smitten as I, although he never said a word about that on the night of our encounter. It didn't at all matter to me that on that first night he did not say that he loved me, or was fond of me, or even attracted to me. But he apparently had eyes for nobody else, and there were many fetching women there. In any case, my dear reader, there we were, Hugh and I, on the balcony in mid-winter, rime on the ornate ironwork of the railing. “We're absolutely mad, you know,” he said, “to leave that womblike interior, infested as it is with people one meets only in one's dreams.” “Yes, Hugh.”
“Did I tell you I know your brother, Clarissa? We take some of the same lectures together. Witty and personable man, James is-the sort that makes Oxford tolerable.” “Yes, Hugh.” His lean hands gestured in the brilliantly moonlit night. Our frosty breaths commingled. I peered helplessly up at his poignant triangular face.
Helplessly, yes. Exactly that. Because Hugh Kinsteares could have done anything he wanted to at that and any succeeding moments, and I would not have demurred. He could have said the moon was an old child's answer to a balloon, and I would have concurred. He could have said love was a physic and wasted our bowels, and I would have assented. He could have said time was a bisexual seducer, and I would have believed him. He could have said Disraeli was an imposter and Gladstone a fool, and I would eagerly have nodded my numbskull, hypnotized by the play of moonlight on his quizzical face. I could have gazed at Hugh forever, I could have gone on memorizing him without end…
Indeed, it would not even have mattered to me if he had never made love to me. It would have been sufficient for me simply to be in Hugh's presence… ah, my dear reader, this is so very painful to recount… it would have been better, as you will see, if Hugh Kinsteares had never made love to me… But let me go back to counting the ways I loved him, let me go back to the Postings' ball, and Hugh and I on the balcony in the dead of winter… “You're beginning to shiver,” he said. “Yes,” I said. He put his arm about me and drew me close. “Clarissa,” he murmured, “Yes, Hugh?” “You do impossible things to me-and at very short notice.
I hereby protest. Really, Clarissa, I don't even know if you enjoy great music. I mean, do you enjoy Bach, for example?” “I'll attend Bach on any occasion you like.” He frowned. He was nettled. I smiled to myself. “That's not what I asked you,” he said. I smiled out loud. “I like Mozart,” I said. “Not Bach?” “Mozart, Purcell, Scarlatti, Schumann.” “Not Bach.”
“No,” I said. “Well,” he said, “the others you mention are considerable.” “Are they?” I looked at him ingenuously. “You know,” he said, grinning wryly, “you're making fun of me and I don't mind at all…” “I? Making fun of you, Hugh? Oh no, no really, not even in the most distant sense.” “Nevertheless,” he said, holding me more tightly as I shivered again, “I'd better take you inside-or we'll both be dead of winter…” Once again in the Postings' drawing room, the dazzling guests surrounding us, I turned to him and said, “You know, Hugh, if you like I can introduce you to my mother and father-they're with me here tonight. The point is, I've never once introduced my parents to any of the men I've been with…”
“Isn't that curious,” he said. “My own mother and father are here tonight, and I've a similar impulse to take you to them. But let's resist, Clarissa. I don't think it will matter, one way or another…”
A shadow flitted across his face. Strange thing, that shadow, in conjunction with something else. His skin, you see, was quite bronzed-he evidently spent a good deal of time in the outdoors-but he suddenly seemed to pale beneath the bronze, which I either saw with my own eyes or somehow otherwise discerned it. In any case, the shadow and the paling gave me pause. Something was amiss, and I'd no idea what it was. I was frightened. “Hugh,” I said. “Yes?” He gazed down at me with that special fondness that alone is love, and I knew I wanted to erect a barrier between us and the rest of the world-I wanted to protect him from any threat, and I felt his feeling toward me was exactly that, as well. “What is it, Hugh?” I asked.
He looked at me quizzically. “What is what?” “Hugh, I want you to know there's nothing-nothing in the world-that you need conceal from me.” He grinned lightly, as if there were a little sailboat on his lips. “What about all those things we conceal from ourselves, Clarissa? What are we to do with them?” I gazed at him anxiously. “I don't know,” I said. “Well,” he said, “no matter.” “No, it is a matter.” Hugh bade a passing footman pause and, from the tray he bore, Hugh took two shallow glasses of champagne and directed me to a small alcove where for the time being we could be out of the restless ebb and flow of the guests.
His own restless eyes challenged mine. “Clarissa, I know it's been said countless times before, and felt innumerable times before that, but it does seem strange to me that I seem to have known you for a terribly long time and that I can say anything at all to you or do anything at all with you…” “Anything, My Lord,” I said quietly. “Anything.” We gazed at each other for what seemed like split infinities, the brilliance of the gaslight dimmed in the alcove so that I really could not discern the feverishness that had overtaken his features, but the heat of it was somehow transmitted to me.
So-I touched his hand. It seemed terribly dry, terribly cool-and listless. Again I was frightened. We finished the champagne at hand and Hugh brought us two more glasses. We were beginning to chuckle immoderately, even though I felt that fright in the background.
“If there's enough of this,” Hugh said, gesturing at the champagne, “then even those things we conceal from ourselves become of small consequence.” “Is that altogether true?” I asked quietly.
He smiled wryly then. “No, not really. And, you know, I don't mind in the least your taking issue, Clarissa…” For the moment, no one was passing the alcove. Hugh drew me to him, held me close, laid his cheek next to mine and then kissed me-kissed me briefly, almost flutteringly, almost-the analogy actually occurred to me then-almost like a moth attracted to bright flame, the moth destined to die… “Oh, Hugh,” I said. “Darling Hugh.”
“Sweet Clarissa,” he said. I hesitated, but then I felt it terribly urgent that I know, even though I knew it awkward to ask.
“Hugh…” “Yes?” “What are you concealing from yourself?” “Clarissa, how could I possibly know?” “I've a sense that you do.” He laughed. “We're quarreling.” I blushed.
“Hugh, really. There's something you're hiding, and I must know what it is.” “Given your presumption,” he said, “why must you know?”
“I might be able to do something about it.” “If there is anything one can do about it,” he said lightly. “Don't you think I ought to be the judge of that?” “Not exclusively,” I said. “Not any more.” He gazed at me a long time quite impassively. There was no clue on his features as to what he might be thinking or feeling. I felt baffled, frustrated, choked off. Finally Hugh said, “There's nothing particularly that you ought to know.” “All right!” I said testily. I turned away from him. Daringly he placed his hands on my breasts and brought me around again and kissed me squarely, heavily, sensually. There was no mothlike fluttering, no brevity. It was a long kiss, done regardless of who might be walking by the alcove, and in doing so he brought my body hard against his.
Despite the intervening textures, the thicknesses of my silks and satins, and those of Hugh's tight trousers, I registered the ridge of the man's generative organ- and a vertigo momentarily afflicted me. I recognized that the organ was puny in diameter but that the extent of it was spectacular-suitable, I told myself in a conceit, to coil as a hempen rope, except that its rigidity would disarm such an arrangement. Again I thought of the equipment of certain dogs… My eyes widened, I held my lips away from Hugh and put him at arm's length. I peered down at his thighs. “Really?” I said. “I can't quite believe it.” “Skeptical creatures, virgins,” he said, grinning. “You might just as damned well know,” I said, “that I don't subscribe to that malaise.” He became mock-serious.
“Then you've exercised with a long series of men,” he said, resting his chin on the knuckles of his hand. I shook my head violently. I had to take him seriously-my wit failed me where my own body, and his, was concerned. “No,” I said miserably. “No. There was only one, really, and he was a long time ago…” I gazed down at my folded hands. “And I didn't love him,” I added, relying on a whisper. “You needn't feel guilty,” Hugh said. “I shan't tell a soul.” I stamped my foot. “I don't feel at all guilty,” I said, “and you can tell anybody you please-” “I've made you angry, Clarissa. I am sorry.” “I wish you wouldn't be, Hugh. I can express any feelings I like to you, but that won't affect my love.
I could hate you but never stop loving you. I might wish you dead but that would never affect my actions in seeing to it that you stayed alive forever…” “Eyes the color of emeralds,” he mused. “Hair the color of Charon's calling. The mantle of the skeleton pure milk…” He rested a hand on my arse, and my knees began to shake. His voice sank to just above a hush. “May I milk you, sweet Clarissa?
Clarissa of the black and green and white-” “Yes,” I said raspingly, “you may milk me. You may pull at me, knead me, roll me on the floor-you may hang me, if you-if that gives you pleasure…” I went on in that idiotic fashion until I ran out of all the violent verbs I could think of. Then, anticlimactically, I appended in something close to a whimper, “Please take me to your rooms tonight, Hugh… I will make excuses to my mother and father.” He trembled visibly. “No,” he said, paling. “As beautiful as you are, Clarissa-no. I can't-don't you understand?” “What's there to understand?” I said dully, wearily, hopelessly. “When you say that, Hugh, it's obvious you don't want me-not really. There's something repelling you-” “That's not true,” he said. The other guests, in their rounds, were smiling at us now as they passed, as if to say, “What a handsome couple-that enchanting black-haired beauty with that slim blond young man who might have just come out of Gainsborough.” Or Beardsley, possibly, I thought, except that the latter might imply decay, rot, putrescence-and I was appalled that I was thinking in such a fashion. Was there something I was sensing and could not give consciousness to? I didn't know, not at that point.
“I want you,” he said, adding, “more than anything I've ever wanted. I am not repelled an iota, Clarissa.” “Then why won't you take me to your quarters? Is there another woman there? Or another man?” I put in anxiously. Viscount Kinsteares was suddenly moved to raucous laughter. “I do have a man there,” he said finally. “My valet, Heeg- Aaron Heeg. You could not want a more puritanical creature…” “He would not approve of me, Hugh. I think I understand, but I must point out that there must be moral agreement between master and man before third parties, such as women, can appear comfortably on the scene.” His features clouded. “I'm afraid, Clarissa, you understand very little, but I assure you that's not your doing. It's mine.” As it turned out, I let Hugh Kinsteares put me off. After all, I did not want to take the chance of his not seeing me at all, which he implied might be the alternative to my insistence that he take me to his flat. I should not have let him put me off-his roots would not have grown so deep within me, nor would the final agony have been so catastrophic. We went everywhere together-everywhere, that is, where we were not likely to be noticed, and we met at rendezvous: which our respective parents would not be likely to have much knowledge of. They had no idea Hugh and I were seeing each other regularly or irregularly, and would never suspect, for example, that we would spend long hours at the British Museum with the Elgin Marbles-the fabulous statuary Lord Elgin had brought back with him from Greece. Or that, when spring came, we enjoyed-mainly because we were together-the fireworks at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens; and, when the summer was almost upon us, punting on the Thames. The summer precipitated matters. I was scheduled, of course, to accompany my mother and father to our retreat in Cornwall.
Hugh and I were punting far upstream on the Thames when we talked the Cornwall matter over, and we let our boat drift idly to the shade of the riverbank. Hugh was very tense and somber. I tried to lighten his mood although I myself felt beclouded on what was otherwise an enchanting, sunny afternoon filled to the brim now with the caroling of birds and the ceaseless chatter of the insects. I took off my flowing hat, let my black hair cascade over my shoulders and unbuttoned the first few buttons of my shirtwaist, affording Hugh a fine view of the swell of my breasts. I knew he was affected because I saw his response-it was quicker and more thoroughgoing than ever before. I wanted to touch it through the fabric of his trousers, but I dared not do so. I could not restrain myself, however, from staring at it, nor could I check the sigh that escaped my lips. “Clarissa-”
“Yes, Hugh?” “Must you go about unfastened?” “It's terribly warm.” “By this point, Clarissa, I could have an orgasm simply by looking at you.” I felt a terrible oiliness churning within me and I knew that my pubes were slick with secretion. “I don't want you to have it that way, Hugh.” It occurred to me I wasn't doing a very good job of lightening his mood. “Oh, hell,” I added, smiling one-sidedly, “have it any damned way you like-it's not the end-all and the be-all. Just take the damned thing out of your trousers and play with it and then squirt it into the Thames-there isn't another punt on the horizon, so nobody could possibly notice.”
His somberness broke and gave way to laughter. “There's not another female,” he said, “in all of England who would speak to me the way you just have.” “And so you love me.” His laughter subsided. He looked at me gravely and said what he had never admitted before. “Yes,” he said. “I love you, Clarissa.” My eyes must have been shining from the hint of my tears. Nevertheless, I spoke prosaically enough. “Then there's nothing hideous to a summer separation-we can be married in the fall,” I said. “I realize that, Clarissa, but I don't want you going through an entire summer feeling sexually suppressed and therefore very possibly resentful-you might end the summer by hating me.” “I don't think that likely, Hugh, but we needn't take chances…” “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.” He gazed at me speculatively.
“Yes, Clarissa, I guess I do. A vivid memory can be of great help in retrospect.” He took a long breath. He gazed at me with the most beautiful yearning I have ever seen on a man's face- as if he must without a single error commit me to memory. But there was a strange element in his eye, a kind of abstractedness that made me feel misgivings. But I was at sea with respect to those misgivings-I had no reference point. What could my anxiety be about? I had absolutely no idea. But what I did feel was that I could wait for a summer to pass before occupying the same bed with Hugh, and I said so. He shook his head, demurring. “No,” he said, “it's too much to ask. I've delayed this long enough, Clarissa. I will take you home now and tonight you will come round to my rooms. Doubtless you can satisfy your parents about your prospective absence by a pretext-say, the London Symphony will be playing for the first time a composition by Elgar, which in fact it is, and that you absolutely must hear the performance.” “All right, Hugh.” “The real performance will take place at Number Sixteen Gimquarles Street-it is just off St Paul's.” “Yes, Hugh, I know.” “I will expect you at eight.”
“Yes.” Quite suddenly, then, Viscount Kinsteares was very jaunty. His merry air had something of the impishly bawdy to it. It was as if-in the light of what eventually occurred-he had cast all caution to the winds, that he had decided to yield to the Devil, after all. His jaunty air struck terror to my soul-and I had absolutely no inkling why.