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By the time he got it, it had passed through his mind several times that it was unfortunate Marie had come upon him before he had thought of seeking out a compliant maidservant. If he had not been aching with need, he would not have leapt so quickly on her suggestion. In fact, if it had not been that Walter was too kind to hurt a woman by rejection after they had gone so far, he would have left Marie's chamber and gone out to look for a whore on whom to ease himself. |
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Marie, as it turned out, was a dreadful disappointment to Walter. In general, a woman who sought a lover did so for one of two reasons: She had a strong appetite for coupling or she wished to spite her husband. Walter had always avoided the latter, not only because there was more than ordinary danger that the husband was the jealous kind but because such women were often hard to satisfyif not totally frigid. Because Marie had no husband to spite and he had told her he was betrothed, Walter had assumed that she desired to couple because she felt a need for it. He expected her to be as eager as he was himself. |
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But when they came to it, he did not find her eager at all. It took twice as long as Walter expected to get Marie into the bed in the first place, and she interrupted him half a dozen times, both while he was trying to ready her and while they were actually coupled, with awkward questions about the permanence of his affection for her. Although Walter found answers the first few times that seemed to satisfy her without actually lying or compromising himself, he was ready to murder his bedmate long before he came to his twice-aborted climax. |
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For all his patience and restraint, Walter did not even obtain the satisfaction of knowing he had contented Marie. She was not cold to him; she was all compliancewhen she was not talking about eternal love. Her body moved with his, and she even seemed mildly to enjoy what was taking place. But she never clung to him with the desperation of a woman on the border of unbearable joy, he felt no tension building in her, and her voice was steady, not tremulous with passion, when she asked him whether he would be willing to live in poverty with her as she would be to live with him so long as they could be always together. |
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Walter did not answer that question at all. He himself was |
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