e holds me harder, keeping his hands upon me but pinning down my arms with his own. He is tall, he is strong. His fingers meet about my waist—as young men''s fingers are meant to do, I believe, on the waists of their sweethearts. For a time I strain against the pressure: we stand braced and sweating as a pair of wrestlers in a ring. But I suppose that, from a distance, we might seem swaying in a kind of love.
But I think this dully; and soon I feel myself begin to tire. The sun is still hot upon us. The frogs still chant, the water still laps among the reeds. But the day has been punctured or ripped: I can feel it begin to droop and settle, close about me, in suffocating folds.
''I am sorry,'' I say weakly.
''You needn''t be sorry, now.''
''It is only—''
''You must be strong. I have seen you be strong, before.''
''It is only—''
But, only what? How might I say it? Only that she held my head against her breast, when I woke bewildered. That she warmed my foot with her breath, once. That she ground my pointed tooth with a silver thimble. That she brought me soup—clear soup—instead of an egg, and smiled to see me drink it. That her eye has a darker fleck of brown. That she thinks me good . . .
Richard is watching my face. ''Listen to me, Maud,'' he says now. He pulls me tight. I am sagging in his arms. ''Listen! If it were any girl but her. If it were Agnes! Hey? But this is the girl that must be cheated, and robbed of her liberty, for us to be free. This is the girl