Roman Summer by Jane Arbor

Ruth again, ‘that he isn’t often as unattached as all that.’
    ‘The wolf type, eh? I’d judge you to have poise enough to keep that kind at a distance. And you can’t run away from all men, just to escape the nasty few. That way you could become so—desiccated that you could forget how to respond to the real thing when it happens again.’
    Ruth hesitated. She hadn’t meant the exchange to take this personal turn. For her it was dangerous.
    ‘ Sometimes I think — ’ She stopped. Since last night the present tense wasn’t honest. ‘There have been times when I’ve thought I’d already forgotten,’ she amended.
    ‘ You should keep in practice by giving even the most unlikely affair a chance to develop for you.’ Erle turned to lean back against the parapet, so that he faced her. ‘In that regard,’ he said, ‘I wonder if you know why I suggested we come up here, hoping we’d be alone?’
    She was trembling a little. ‘Why did you?’
    ‘For curiosity’s sake.’
    ‘Curiosity—about me?’
    ‘About all this,’ he nodded. ‘To see whether you’re really as detached as you appear and as cloistered as you claim to be; whether your lack of the girl-tricks that most women employ—all eyes and invitation— means that you’ve indeed gone cold. And about that, there’s only one way I know of for a man to find out — ’
    As he spoke, his hands went out to her shoulders, then about her, drawing her to him. She drew a sharp breath, panting, her lips parted, as his mouth found hers in a long searching kiss which merged with another ... and another to which she responded with all the pent-up, starved emotion of years. Yet not only because she was hungry for love but because, though he didn’t know it, he was her love, the one man now alive who could rouse her so. Her body willow-bent to the pressure of his arms, she gave herself up to the moment; her hands wandered over his back—and clung as urgently as his until the engulfing tide of feeling ebbed; cold sanity returned, and she wrenched herself desperately free.
    She smoothed down her dre s s and thrust back her hair. ‘That was — ’ she began.
    ‘Unfair? Yes.’ Erle stood, his hands limp at his sides, his breath coming as deeply as a runner’s. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have invited it. But I didn’t know — ’
    ‘Didn’t know what?’ she echoed sharply, afraid.
    ‘Just how much need you’ve had to keep dammed up ... bottled inside you behind the calm face you show to the world.’
    ‘You claimed that it was what you kissed me for—to find out,’ she accused him.
    ‘I never expected to spring a mine at your feet. After all, I’m just any man to you. Yet that was neither an iceberg nor a lukewarm response. It was the kind of woman-answer you’d give to a lover, and I shouldn’t have probed something that has so little to do with me.’
    So she hadn’t betrayed her secret to him after all! It gave her spirit to say distantly, ‘For mere curiosity, no. And what makes you think you betrayed me into the kind of answer I’d give to someone who really loved me?’
    ‘Just that, supposing I were a man with hopes of you but no certainties, I’d have been—encouraged.’
    ‘You were putting on an act. Doesn’t it occur to you that I was enti tl ed to do the same?’
    His scrutiny of her face was calculating, as if he were weighing that up. ‘If you say so, then I hope so,’ he said. ‘I’d rather not think of your showing that degree of co-operation to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who made an experimental pass. So where do we go from here—into a state of war?’
    ‘How can we, placed as we are in r elation to Cicely? If I can forget a piece of appalling taste, I should hope you can do the same.’
    Erle said, ‘Agreed. I only asked because in war, they say, you can’t afford to blunder twice, and I wanted you to know that I’ve no intention of offending again.’
    ‘Good,’ said Ruth. ‘Once was enough for something