Читать книгу An Affair of State - Harry Hart Frank - Страница 10

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He took her to her apartment door. She said, “I’d ask you in, but it wouldn’t do either of us any good.”

“I guess not.” Still, he didn’t want to leave. She seemed very small, standing close to him there in the doorway. When she was seated her straight shoulders and the way she held her head gave her an illusion of height, but when she stood up she really wasn’t very tall.

“Well, goodbye,” she said, her fingers poised to turn the key.

“Well, goodnight,” he said, but he didn’t go.

“You don’t feel very platonic, do you?”

“Frankly, no.”

“I’m not going to be coy, and tell you I never let a man make love to me the first time I’m out with him. I’m just going to say I’m sorry.”

He cupped her shoulders in his hands. “Susan, this isn’t the way I was hoping it would be. Look at me.”

She kept her eyes on the key. “I didn’t want it to be like this either. I wanted to go out with you and see if something wouldn’t happen. It didn’t.”

“Suppose we are a pinch of ashes in the first day of World War number three? Why not have what we can now? I’m afraid I sound silly—like a kid quoting Omar.”

“Oh, no, Jeff. You’re not silly. You’re perfectly logical.”

“Well?”

She didn’t attempt to move, or say anything more, until his fingers loosened. “I’m not afraid for myself,” she said then. “If I thought the world would go up in one big bang I honestly wouldn’t care much. I think I’d be sort of relieved. It’s just that I’m afraid to have anyone else because I’ve got the damndest premonition I’d lose him.”

“If you went to a psychiatrist,” Jeff said, “which I think you ought to do, he’d tell you you were wrong.”

“I’m sure of it. If I thought I could have a man without too many inner complications, well, we’d be in there, and not out here. Only I know I can’t, Jeff. I’ve only had one man in my life. Well, not counting schoolgirl experiments. And if I had another I’d feel the same way towards him that I did towards my husband and then, the war would come along and kill him.”

“The trouble with you, Susan, is that you won’t take a chance on the world.”

“I don’t see why I should take a chance when I know that the cards are stacked. Now go on home, Jeff. I’ll stay as I am.”