He was amused and tolerant about the
dictionary. He seemed to think girls need not trouble to understand what
they read. He was particularly superior about "little girls trying to
take strong meat when they were at the milk-for-babes stage of
development."
"But you know, Louis," she said, looking up from her pamphlet with a
perplexed frown, "He seems to think that if a man wants a cup of tea and
a piece of bread and butter, it's sex!"
"Well, so it is," said Louis calmly, puffing at his cigarette and
watching her through the smoke. "Every hunger on earth is sex, right at
bottom--every desire is generated by the sex force; drinking, love of
parents and children, love of God, the artist's desire for beauty and to
create beauty--just sex, old lady!"
He laughed at her horrified face.
"And you're such a bally little Puritan you think that's terrible, don't
you?"
She nodded, flushing.
"You aren't a Puritan, really, Marcella," he said, watching her face.
"It's your upbringing has made you a Puritan."
"Louis," she burst out, "I'd rather be a Puritan, I think--and be all
dead and dried up like Aunt Janet, than--than--what you call bowled
over. I'd loathe that anything should have me; put me in chains; make me
do things! Louis--" her voice dropped to a meek whisper, "it isn't
that--that--beastly sort of thing makes me love you, is it? Makes me
love to buy flowers and books for you, and make food for you, and be
near you? Louis--just because you're a man and I'm a girl?"
"Of course it is, you little silly," he said complacently.
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