From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [468]
“I tried,” he said contortedly. “Nobody’ll ever know how I tried.”
“I’ll know.”
“No you wont. But I looked at them, Ross and Culpepper and Cribbage and the rest of them, and I saw what they were—I couldnt do it.”
“Of course you couldnt. If you could have you wouldnt really be Milt Warden. And I wouldnt love you.”
“But the plans. The rest of it. All the rest of it. I’ve ruined all that.”
“It isnt important.”
“It is important.”
“I’ve owned a thousand houses that I’ve never built,” she said. “Never had the money to build. Couldnt have used if I had had the money. Never really wanted to build, maybe. But I still own the houses.”
“Live in your memories,” Warden said bitterly.
“No. Not at all,” she said clearly. “Not that at all. But I still have my houses.”
“Why does the world have to be like it is?” Warden said, letting himself go completely. “I dont know why the world has to be like it is.”
“I dont know either,” she said. “And I used to be very bitter about it. But now I know it has to be that way. Theres no other way for it to be. Whenever a menace is conquered, a new more subtle menace arises. There is no other way it could be.”
“I’ve never done anything but take from you,” Warden said contortedly. “You’ve given and given. I’ve never given. I’ve only taken.”
“No,” Karen said. “Thats not true. You’ve given me my freedom. Dana can never touch me any more. Never hurt me any more. You’ve made me know I’m attractive. You’ve made me loved.”
“Stark gave you the same thing. At Bliss.”
“What Stark gave me, he took away and nullified in the end. He made sure he destroyed all of it, before he left it.”
“Like I am doing now.”
“No. You’re not. And, really, the truth, I dont think I would have it any other way. I dont think, now, I would want to marry you. We’ve both been slowly throttling our love to death. We’ve been losing it slowly. You know we have.”
“Yes,” Warden said. “Thats true.”
“But this way we will never lose it. Love either starves to death and becomes a shadow, or else it dies young and remains a dream. The only way we could have kept love was to have never had each other. If we could have gone on here as we were, always hungering, never having, we could have kept love. But neither one of us could do that; we both were fighting that very thing, with every force we knew. To have gotten married would have been the coup de grace to a starving man. But the war has stopped that. Wars have their good sides, too.”
“Karen,” Warden said, “how did you learn the things you know?”
“By living as long as I have, and seeing what I could see.”
She leaned back in the chair, her eyes still shining with that lovely light that was never in them except when she was talking about love in theory, the fragile fine-boned hands lying lax along her hips on the chair.
And then he, Milt Warden, 1st/Sgt Milt Warden, was on his knees. Beside the chair.
“I cant lose you,” he, Milt Warden, whispered. “I need you.”
He put his hands up, touching her on her bare thighs.
“Dont,” Karen said restlessly. “Please dont do that. Please dont spoil it.”
“I dont want to do it,” he, Milt Warden, lied. “I just want to touch you.”
“You’ll get all excited,” she said, almost irritably. “You know you will.”
“No I wont.”
“You always do. And I dont want that. I dont want sex. I want love.”
“I just want to touch you,” he lied. “Thats all.” He put his face down onto the solid three-dimension firmness of the long thighs under the green skirt.
“Its been so lovely, Milt. Please dont spoil it now.”
“I wont,” he promised. “I wont spoil it for you. I promise. But cant you feel me love you? Cant you feel it through my hands?”
It was a very strange experience, in a very great many more ways than one.
She submitted gradually reluctantly to his caresses, as a suspicious tame doe only submits by gradual easy stages to the petting, until finally her hands were on his hair, his face, his neck, his shoulders, down his back, and he raised himself up to the chair arm sitting half beside her half on the arm so that he might kiss her, and they were engaged in an ecstasy of sexual love that was sexless.
“I love to touch you,” Karen whispered, “to cuddle you, be fondled by you, love you. But it always leads to sex. You’ll never know the times I’ve wanted to touch you, but not done it, because it always leads