Moonchild

Chapter4 LUNCH, AFTER ALL; AND A LUMINOUS ACCOUNT OF THE FOURTH DIMENSION "I CONFESS to hunger," said Simon Iff, after a few moments. Cyril kissed Lisa on the mouth, and walked with his arm still circling her, to the sideboard. "You are hostess here now you know," he said quite simply. All his affectations dropped from him at that moment, and Lisa understood that he was just a simple-minded, brave, and honest man, who, walking in the midst of perils, had devised a formidable armament both for attack and defence. She felt a curious pang of pain simultaneously with a sense of exaltation. For she was no longer merely his mistress; he had accepted her as a friend. It was no longer a purely sexual relation, which is always in the nature of a duel; he might cease to love her, in the crude savage sense; but he would always be a pal — just as if she were a man. And here was the pang: was he sure to return to the mood that her whole body and soul were even at that moment crying out for? The story of his "Judgment of Paris," as they called it, came into her mind. Some years before, he had had three women in love with him at once. It seemed to each that she was the only one. But they discovered the arrangement — he never took pains to hide such things — and they agreed to confront him. They called at his studio together, and [51] told him that he must choose one of them. He smoked a full pipe before replying; then went to his bedroom and returned with a pair of socks — in need of attention. "Simon, Son of Jonas, lovest thou me? — Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. Mend my socks," he misquoted somewhat blasphemously, and threw the socks to the one he really loved. Lisa meant to lay the table in that sense of the word, so to speak. She