She wanted, in one mood, to come
rushing to me, to cast herself on her knees at my feet and to
declaim a carefully arranged, frightfully emotional, outpouring as
to her passion. That was to show that she was like one of the great
erotic women of whom history tells us. In another mood she
would desire to come to me disdainfully and to tell me that I was
considerably less than a man and that what had happened was what
must happen when a real male came along. She wanted to say that
in cool, balanced and sarcastic sentences. That was when she
wished to appear like the heroine of a French comedy. Because of
course she was always play acting.
But what she didn't want me to know was the fact of her first
escapade with the fellow called Jimmy. She had arrived at
figuring out the sort of low-down Bowery tough that that fellow
was. Do you know what it is to shudder, in later life, for some
small, stupid action--usually for some small, quite genuine piece
of emotionalism--of your early life? Well, it was that sort of
shuddering that came over Florence at the thought that she had
surrendered to such a low fellow. I don't know that she need have
shuddered. It was her footing old uncle's work; he ought never to
have taken those two round the world together and shut himself
up in his cabin for the greater part of the time.
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