"That's why she's attractive, too, I think. Do you? Sincerity makes her passionate."
After this conversation, Margaret watched Lily with even greater attention. Yes, she was sincere. And passionate. It was not what she said, certainly. It was the way she spoke, the way she carried herself, the way she moved as if the very air around her was around her of its own volition, of its own desire, and as if she, on her part, had yearned for the air, had sought its gentle, insistent touch.
Lily sent Margaret and Edward a postcard with a picture of a motel shaped like a cowboy boot. She was lecturing in Oklahoma. The menus were wonderful there. When she came home, she dropped by for dinner, her long-faced protégé Pepe Pican in tow. They were wearing identical silver bolos, and Margaret was jealous.
Lily came a few days later alone and Margaret asked her about Till. "She's not speaking to me," Margaret said.
"Well, she doesn't speak about you either. Does that make you feel better or worse? Look, I don't want to get in the middle, okay? Till is a difficult person. Touchy."
"Is she? I've always thought she was remarkably forbearing."
Lily shrugged and lit a cigarette.
Margaret coughed and waited. But Lily said nothing more about Till. In the weeks that followed, Margaret tried once or twice to talk about Till. Lily would invariably shrug her shoulders and smoke silently so that after a while, Margaret stopped mentioning their friend at all.
Seated on the bed, she opened a large volume on her lap, thus tugging at her silk dressing gown to reveal beneath the delicate fabric the contours of her graceful anatomy in a way that considerably aroused my scientific curiosity and compelled me to move the candle closer.
SHE: I still must argue, sir, in accordance with Helvétius, that there is no separate faculty of judging and comparing, no faculty distinct from sensation. This gown that I am wearing. Touch it. Yes, like that. Yes, just there. Now, touch it here. I am experiencing a richly agreeable sensation, and so too, I think, judging by your facial expression, are you. Now, this business of comparing is nothing else than rendering ourselves attentive to these different impressions excited in us, excited in us by those objects we sense. Objects actually before our eyes, for example.
She paused in order to allow herself to become properly attentive to the object that I, standing up now, revealed before her own eyes.
SHE: Exactly. Notice how we both study the different impressions suddenly excited in us by the exposure of this object and the attention rendered it.
MYSELF: Yes. To this extent I agree with you. For the impression excited in me is clearly demonstrated.
SHE: I am moved by your appraisal of my progress. But what I hope we may do now is simply to continue in our proof that all judgment is nothing more than pronouncing upon sensations experienced: the sensation I am experiencing now is one of shortness of breath, a rising warmth within, an inclination to faintness, and a flushed and overwhelming sense of unbearable longing.
She had, indeed, begun to take on a very agreeable high color and to breathe in that exaggerated manner I had learned to cherish, but this time to such a degree that she quickly began to loosen her own garment, not waiting for the gentle aid I was accustomed to offer.
She removed her garment entirely, revealing the noblest attributes of the most regular beauty. And I observed this sight with a strange and sudden emotion, a disorder in my heart that spread through all my senses.
I succumbed to this rush of impressions, of course. How could I do otherwise? The justness of the mind or judgment depends on the greater or lesser attention with which its observations are made, and I made my observations with the greatest attention I could.
The force of any union between human beings is always in proportion to the force of both habit and want. It is one of the peculiarities of the type of union I was accustomed to forming with my pupil that want often increased with habit, and so the force of habit and want were equally great, and the force of the union therefore overwhelming.
After a while, I closed my eyes, preparing to rest. But I found I could not, for still something was bothering me. Perhaps what I am about to reveal will be considered ungenerous of me. But I see it as not ungenerous. On the contrary, as a sign of the degree of esteem in which I hold human nature, and therefore my pupil. For this is what occurred to me then as I lay restlessly with closed eyes: that, I believed in the perfectibility of the human mind and human understanding. And that, therefore, the time had perhaps come to introduce my pupil to a different level of understanding.