Read The Miller's Dance for Free Online

London, then to this rich Lord's house in Wiltshire.'
    'They didn't take me away. I went of my own accord.'
    'Why?'
    'Why? Because I wanted to - distance myself from you -try to be more sure.'
    'And are you?'
    ‘I think so. Though ... I still h ear things. ’
    ‘ Things!' he said scornfully. 'What do gossip matter? They link me name with every mopsy I so much as look at, let alone exchange a word with over a glass of ale!'
    For a change she kissed him. ‘I know, Stephen. It is the punishment for being such a good-looking man.'
    -Slowly now, even under the shelter of her cloak there began the gentle but urgent exchange of love-play. She was as hungry for Stephen as he was for her, and she doubted her strength in the face of his importunities to continue to refuse him. Presently she half stood up, half broke away from him, her clothes untied and unbuttoned, her stockings fallen about her ankles, stood taking deep breaths, half swaying against him.
    He said: 'Come here next week, same time. I'll light a fire, make the room comfortable, cosy. This window faces the courtyard. Who could see?'
    He thought she moved her head in a negative.
    He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, trying to steady himself too. 'I'm no saint, Clowance, but I'm lost with you like no other ever and I want to be wed to you, and I can't say more. It is me dearest wish. But it can't go on like this. If it goes on like this, one of these days ...'
    'One of these days?'
    'One of these days lying rumours will maybe come true.'
    'About you and some other woman?'
    ‘ Yes. ’
    She was very still. 'Who is to say it might not be just the same if I married you ?'
    it would not be, I swear it. For the need will have gone! D'you understand me, Clowance? Do you at all? Men are not born to be monks. Least, I'm not, and I reckon most are the same. When you're on board ship, it is a mite different. ' You're living hard, working hard, maybe fighting; the thoughts and the desires don't come - leastwise if it's women you care for. But here, there's girls in Grambler and Sawle and St Ann's ready for an easy laugh and a joke and then what follows. And here I am eaten up with desire for a girl who won't give way to me! Every time I see you it make it worse.'
    'D'you think I am -unmoved? D'you know all that much about women?'
    'Maybe not. But a man's desire can reach a point where the need will force him to look elsewhere.'
    A moon was rising but it gave little light inside this room. She half saw, half imagined the expression on his face, which could look so boyish when it smiled, so mature and experienced in displeasure. She realized the truth of what he said. By offering him a partial love she was putting him in a physically intolerable position. Yet if she gave herself to him without marriage society looked on it as the unforgivable sin . For a poor girl of the parish, of course, it was nothing out of the way to become pregnant by a man before she married: it proved to him that they could have children; and if he refused to marry her and support the child he could go to prison on a bastardy charge. But for a girl of the Poldark class, while the matter would be hushed up and the wedding hurried on, the scandal would be soiling, tawdry; beyond contemplation for her.
    Only last month a girl, who it was believed had been g oing with a soldier lately moved away, had taken her own li fe because she was pregnant - and been buried at Bargus where the four parishes met, there being no consecrated ground for the suicide. How many other girls concealed their pregnancy, then delivered themselves and put the child over the cliff or down a disused mine shaft? -
    Yet she loved Stephen and he loved her. If she went on refusing him, whose fault would it be if he did turn to someone else, and she eventually lost him?
    Stephen was watching her. 'What are you thinking of, love? ’
    'I've been thinking that what you said is all true. I must give — must do what you want or promise