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. "They?" I asked myself. "They
who?"
On another, very different day we were walking through the
, gardens loosely holding hands when suddenly he turned to look
closely at me, his face right up against mine-as if he were near–
sighted, I remember thinking at the time.
"I should have waited for you to grow up, Daphne. But of
course you wouldn't bother with someone like me. Why should
you?" And he laughed deprecatingly.
I could have said right then, "Yes I
will
bother." I was
thirteen now-almost a woman- but I was too startled and be–
sides
I didn't want to. The moment spilled on really unnoticed,
for Joshua had from the beginning been relegated to dreamland.
A3 time passed I began to feel that growing up was learning
Dot to care. I decided that in removing myself from Joshua-from
my
dreams-I had begun to grow up.
After Joshua was released and took a job teaching handicrafts
in
a trade school (work for which he was conspicuously unsuited),
we
continued to visit back and forth, but gradually and almost
oonsciously I forced our relationship into a new pattern in whioh
I
was the elder, the big sister, the girl-mother. He played along
with it although sometimes I used to catch him watching me
with
the quirk of a smile. I think that by trying to dominate him
I
was trying to keep my dreams under control.
We had of course to see that he didn't meet Vasiliki at our
t
bouse. This was not easy, for she was always running in "just to
say
hello" but really to find a good husband a t our hands. At first
s
my
mother would barely speak to her, but gradually even her
1.
principles were caught and enervated by Vasiliki's wiles. Vasiliki
and I were quite comfortable together. We agreed about very
f
little except the unspoken mutual tact which absolutely prohibited
any mention of that conversation at Prince Castle, and this bound
us together in easy familiarity.
As time went on, I was occasionally made the recipient of
)
ber discarded boyfriends, gifts which I accepted without any
false
pride. Sometime, I don't know exactly when, I had decided
r
that
I wasn't above taking what I could get where I could get it.
!
By
and by, one of these rejects (the dullest, of course; isn't it
always
that way?) made me. The seduction was mutual-both
