WATCH Sexy Elisha Cuthbert In Action  CLICK HERE for Instant Access Elisha Cuthbert Photos |
Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
you, Martin, not until just now. How did
you make me love you?"
"I dont know," he laughed, "unless just by loving you, for I loved you
hard enough to melt the heart of a stone, much less the heart of the
living, breathing woman you are."
"This is so different from what I thought love would be," she announced
irrelevantly.
"What did you think it would be like?"
"I didnt think it would be like this." She was looking into his eyes at
the moment, but her own dropped as she continued, "You see, I didnt know
what this was like."
He offered to draw her toward him again, but it was no more than a
tentative muscular movement of the girdling arm, for he feared that he
might be greedy. Then he felt her body yielding, and once again she was
close in his arms and lips were pressed on lips.
"What will my people say?" she queried, with sudden apprehension, in one
of the pauses.
"I dont know. We can find out very easily any time we are so minded."
"But if mamma objects? I am sure I am afraid to tell her."
"Let me tell her," he volunteered valiantly. "I think your mother does
not like me, but I can win her around. A fellow who can win you can win
anything. And if we dont--"
"Yes?"
"Why, well have each other. But theres no danger not winning your
mother to our marriage. She loves you too well."
"I should not like to break her heart," Ruth said pensively.
He felt like assuring her that mothers hearts were not so easily broken,
but instead he said, "And love is the greatest thing in the world."
"Do you know, Martin, you sometimes frighten me. I am frightened now,
when I think of you and of what you have been. You must be very, very
good to me. Remember, after all, that I am only a child. I never loved
before."
"Nor I. We are both children together. And we are fortunate above most,
for we have found our first love in each other."
"But that is impossible!" she cried, withdrawing herself from his arms
with a swift, passionate movement. "Impossible for you. You have been a
sailor, and sailors, I have heard, are--are--"
Her voice faltered and died away.
"Are addicted to having a wife in every port?" he suggested. "Is that
what you mean?"
"Yes," she answered in a low voice.
"But that is not love." He spoke authoritatively. "I have been in many
ports, but I never knew a passing touch of love until I saw you that
first night. Do you know, when I said good night and went away, I was
almost arrested."
"Arrested?"
"Yes. The policeman thought I was drunk; and I was, too--with love for
you."
"But you said we were children, and I said it was impossible, for you,
and we have strayed away from the point."
"I said that I never loved anybody but you," he replied. "You are my
first, my very first."
"And yet you have been a sailor," she objected.
"But that doesnt prevent me from loving you the first."
"And there have been women--other women--oh!"
And to Martin Edens supreme surprise, she burst into a storm of tears
that took more kisses than one and many caresses to drive away. And all
the while there was running through his head Kiplings line: "_And the
Colonels lady and Judy OGrady are sisters under their skins_." It was
true, he decided; though the novels he had read had led him to believe
otherwise. His idea, for which the novels were responsible, had been
that only formal proposals obtained in the upper classes. It was all
right enough, down whence he had come, for youths and maidens to win each
other by contact; but for the exalted personages up above on the heights
to make love in similar fashion had seemed unthinkable. Yet the novels
were wrong. Here was a proof of it. The same pressures and caresses,
unaccompanied by speech, that were efficacious with the girls of the
working-class, were equally efficacious with the girls above the working-
class. They were all of the same flesh, after all, sisters under their
skins; and he might have known as much himself had he remembered his
Spencer. As he held Ruth in his arms and soothed Martin Eden page 84 Martin Eden page 86 |