The Rise of David Levinsky by Abraham Cahan

Author:Abraham Cahan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T04:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

WE talked about my first love-affair for weeks. She asked me many questions about Matilda, mostly with that pretended air of amused curiosity. Every time I had something good to say about Matilda she would assail her brutally.

The fact that Dora never referred to my story in the presence of her husband was a tacit confession that we had a secret from him. Outwardly it meant that the secret was mine, not hers; that she had nothing to do with it; but then there was another secret—the fact that she was my sole confidante in a matter of this nature—and this secret was ours in common.

On one occasion, in the course of one of these confabs of ours, she said, with ill-concealed malice:

“Do you really think she cared for you? Not that much,” marking off the tip of her little finger.

“Why should you say that? Why should you hurt my feelings?” I protested.

“It still hurts your feelings, then, does it? There is a faithful lover for you! But what would you have me say? That she loved you as much as you loved her?”

At this Dora jerked her head backward, with a laugh that rang so charmingly false and so virulent that I was impelled both to slap her face and to kiss it.

“But tell me,” she said, with a sudden affectation of sedate curiosity, “was she really so beautiful?”

“I never said she was ‘so beautiful,’ did I? You are far more beautiful than she.”

“Oh, stop joking, please! Can’t you answer seriously?”

“I really mean it.”

“Mean what?”

“That you are prettier than Matilda.”

“Is that the way you are faithful to her?”

“Oh, that was five years ago. Now there is somebody else I am faithful to.”

She was silent. Her cheeks glowed.

“Why don’t you ask who that somebody is?”

“Because I don’t care. What do I care? And please don’t talk like that. I mean what I say. You must promise me never to talk like that,” she said, gravely.

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