A thousand deaths by Jack London

awkward and delightfully miserable.

Neither knew love, and all that either was aware was an overwhelming

desire to look at the other. Both had been troubled and roused, and

they were drawing together with the sharpness and imperativeness of

uniting elements. He toyed with his spoon, and flushed his

embarrassment over his soda, but lingered on; and she spoke softly,

dropped her eyes, and wove her witchery about him.

But he could not linger forever over a glass of ice-cream soda,

while he did not dare ask for a second glass. So he left her to

remain in the shop in a waking trance, and went away himself down

the street like a somnambulist. Genevieve dreamed through the

afternoon and knew that she was in love. Not so with Joe. He knew

only that he wanted to look at her again, to see her face. His

thoughts did not get beyond this, and besides, it was scarcely a

thought, being more a dim and inarticulate desire.

The urge of this desire he could not escape. Day after day it

worried him, and the candy shop and the girl behind the counter

continually obtruded themselves. He fought off the desire. He was

afraid and ashamed to go back to the candy shop. He solaced his

fear with, “I ain’t a ladies’ man.” Not once, nor twice, but scores

of times, he muttered the thought to himself, but it did no good.

And by the middle of the week, in the evening, after work, he came

into the shop. He tried to come in carelessly and casually, but his

whole carriage advertised the strong effort of will that compelled

his legs to carry his reluctant body thither. Also, he was shy, and

awkwarder than ever. Genevieve, on the contrary, was serener than

ever, though fluttering most alarmingly within. He was incapable of

speech, mumbled his order, looked anxiously at the clock, despatched

his ice-cream soda in tremendous haste, and was gone.

She was ready to weep with vexation. Such meagre reward for four

days’ waiting, and assuming all the time that she loved! He was a

nice boy and all that, she knew, but he needn’t have been in so

disgraceful a hurry. But Joe had not reached the corner before he

wanted to be back with her again. He just wanted to look at her.

He had no thought that it was love. Love? That was when young

fellows and girls walked out together. As for him–And then his

desire took sharper shape, and he discovered that that was the very

thing he wanted her to do. He wanted to see her, to look at her,

and well could he do all this if she but walked out with him. Then

THE GAME

10

that was why the young fellows and girls walked out together, he

mused, as the week-end drew near. He had remotely considered this

walking out to be a mere form or observance preliminary to

matrimony. Now he saw the deeper wisdom in it, wanted it himself,

and concluded therefrom that he was in love.

Both were now of the same mind, and there could be but the one

ending; and it was the mild nine days’ wonder of Genevieve’s

neighborhood when she and Joe walked out together.

Both were blessed with an avarice of speech, and because of it their

courtship was a long one. As he expressed himself in action, she

expressed herself in repose and control, and by the love-light in

her eyes–though this latter she would have suppressed in all maiden

modesty had she been conscious of the speech her heart printed so

plainly there. “Dear” and “darling” were too terribly intimate for

them to achieve quickly; and, unlike most mating couples, they did

not overwork the love-words. For a long time they were content to

walk together in the evenings, or to sit side by side on a bench in

the park, neither uttering a word for an hour at a time, merely

gazing into each other’s eyes, too faintly luminous in the starshine

to be a cause for self-consciousness and embarrassment.

He was as chivalrous and delicate in his attention as any knight to

his lady. When they walked along the street, he was careful to be

on the outside,–somewhere he had heard that this was the proper

thing to do,–and when a crossing to the opposite side of the street

put him on the inside, he swiftly side-stepped behind her to gain

the outside again. He carried her parcels for her, and once, when

rain threatened, her umbrella. He had never heard of the custom of

sending flowers to one’s lady-love, so he sent Genevieve fruit

instead. There was utility in fruit. It was good to eat. Flowers

never entered his mind, until, one day, he noticed a pale rose in

her hair. It drew his gaze again and again. It was HER hair,

therefore the presence of the flower interested him. Again, it

interested him because SHE had chosen to put it there. For these

reasons he was led to observe the rose more closely. He discovered

that the effect in itself was beautiful, and it fascinated him. His

ingenuous delight in it was a delight to her, and a new and mutual

love-thrill was theirs–because of a flower. Straightway he became

a lover of flowers. Also, he became an inventor in gallantry. He

sent her a bunch of violets. The idea was his own. He had never

heard of a man sending flowers to a woman. Flowers were used for

decorative purposes, also for funerals. He sent Genevieve flowers

nearly every day, and so far as he was concerned the idea was

original, as positive an invention as ever arose in the mind of man.

He was tremulous in his devotion to her–as tremulous as was she in

her reception of him. She was all that was pure and good, a holy of

holies not lightly to be profaned even by what might possibly be the

too ardent reverence of a devotee. She was a being wholly different

from any he had ever known. She was not as other girls. It never

entered his head that she was of the same clay as his own sisters,

or anybody’s sister. She was more than mere girl, than mere woman.

She was–well, she was Genevieve, a being of a class by herself,

nothing less than a miracle of creation.

THE GAME

11

And for her, in turn, there was in him but little less of illusion.

Her judgment of him in minor things might be critical (while his

judgment of her was sheer worship, and had in it nothing critical at

all); but in her judgment of him as a whole she forgot the sum of

the parts, and knew him only as a creature of wonder, who gave

meaning to life, and for whom she could die as willingly as she

could live. She often beguiled her waking dreams of him with

fancied situations, wherein, dying for him, she at last adequately

expressed the love she felt for him, and which, living, she knew she

could never fully express.

Their love was all fire and dew. The physical scarcely entered into

it, for such seemed profanation. The ultimate physical facts of

their relation were something which they never considered. Yet the

immediate physical facts they knew, the immediate yearnings and

raptures of the flesh–the touch of finger tips on hand or arm, the

momentary pressure of a hand-clasp, the rare lip-caress of a kiss,

the tingling thrill of her hair upon his cheek, of her hand lightly

thrusting back the locks from above his eyes. All this they knew,

but also, and they knew not why, there seemed a hint of sin about

these caresses and sweet bodily contacts.

There were times when she felt impelled to throw her arms around him

in a very abandonment of love, but always some sanctity restrained

her. At such moments she was distinctly and unpleasantly aware of

some unguessed sin that lurked within her. It was wrong,

undoubtedly wrong, that she should wish to caress her lover in so

unbecoming a fashion. No self-respecting girl could dream of doing

such a thing. It was unwomanly. Besides, if she had done it, what

would he have thought of it? And while she contemplated so horrible

a catastrophe, she seemed to shrivel and wilt in a furnace of secret

shame.

Nor did Joe escape the prick of curious desires, chiefest among

which, perhaps, was the desire to hurt Genevieve. When, after long

and tortuous degrees, he had achieved the bliss of putting his arm

round her waist, he felt spasmodic impulses to make the embrace

crushing, till she should cry out with the hurt. It was not his

nature to wish to hurt any living thing. Even in the ring, to hurt

was never the intention of any blow he struck. In such case he

played the Game, and the goal of the Game was to down an antagonist