It undoubtedly has happened, oftener than it should have, in the
history of the world that young men have made these onsets without
just provocation and have been properly slapped, horsewhipped, or
shot for their unwelcome violence. It has also happened that young
men have failed to make these onsets when they would have been
welcome.
But the perfection of the womanly art of self-pretense is when
she subtly wills the young man to overpower her and is so carried
away by her own success that she forgets who started it. She droops,
swoons, shivers before the fury of her own inspiration, and cries
out, with absolute sincerity: "How dare you! How could you! What
made you!" or simply moans, "Why, Oswald!" and resists invitingly.
Kedzie had been hoping and praying that Jim Dyckman would kiss
her, and mutely daring him to. Yet when he obeyed her tacit behest
and asked her permission she was too frightened to refuse. He was
stronger than she expected, and he held her longer. When at last
she came out for air she was shattered with a pleasant horror.
She barely had the strength to gasp, "Why, Mr. Dyckman, aren't you
awful?" and time to straighten her jumbled hat and hair when her
apartment-building drew up alongside the limousine and came to
a halt.
Dyckman pleaded, like a half-witted booby, "Let's take a little
longer ride."
But she remembered her dignity and said, with imperial scorn,
"I should hope not!"
She permitted him to help her out.
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