(And where is Josiah Bass, Etna’s intended? Away. He is simply away.)
How will Samuel negotiate this tricky evening? For he has a gift he wishes to bestow upon Etna. He cannot give it to her in front of the mother and the sister, because he has not brought them gifts as well. Nor can he give it under Thomas’s scrutiny, for Thomas, though a scientist, would surely detect an unnatural favoritism in the singling out of Etna. A walk is therefore contrived — casually, politely. Samuel invites Mrs. Bliss first, praying that she won’t accept. She does not; it is too cold for her. Etna accepts readily, speaking of the pleasure of seeing smoke emanating from other houses, of encountering carolers along the way. Miriam is tired, she says, and miraculously she declines.
Scarcely able to conceal his relief, Samuel moves with Etna to the vestibule, where they dress for the cold, each carefully avoiding the gaze of the other. Each is aware of a sense of conspiracy at this point, though neither gives anything away.
The pair walk in silence for some time — not toward the houses with the warm fires, as it happens, but away from them. They reach one of the many playing fields of the men’s preparatory school. Together they look at its snowy expanse, lit by a Christmas moon.
“Etna,” Samuel says.
He gives Etna the package, which she holds in her gloved hand a moment before opening it. (It hurts me to have to imagine that she has considerably more enthusiasm for this the unopened gift than she did for my own on the college path, but there it is.) There is fumbling with stiffened fingers as Etna undoes the ribbon. The silver gleams in the moonlight. Samuel takes Etna’s hand, removes her glove, and slides the bracelet onto her wrist, nearly as white as the moon. Pointedly, he does not release her wrist.
“I had to give you something,” he says.
“I cannot accept it,” she says.
“You must accept it. You can wear it privately.”
“I am engaged to be married,” Etna says, stating the perfectly obvious.
“As am I,” Samuel says.
Samuel kisses Etna then in a way I think we can safely say Etna has never been kissed before, certainly not by Josiah Bass, for whom we shall invent imperfect teeth and slightly metallic breath. Asher’s kiss unleashes a previously unknown physical response from Etna, and for a few moments she is lost to the world, heedless and uncaring: all that exists is Samuel, to whom she is unreasonably and powerfully attracted. She doesn’t entirely understand what is happening to her (not as Samuel does, for example), and so she labels the fluttering in her abdomen and the erratic beating of her heart love and assigns to it a deathless quality. Already she is imagining an elopement, a sacrificing of her honor.
He loves her, Samuel declares. He says so in the moonlight. He begs her to meet him again — in secret this time — the day after Christmas. He has a suite of rooms at the school, he says, nearly empty now because of the holiday. Etna, quite calm, agrees.
The holiday passes. Etna and Samuel meet in his rooms at one o’clock on the twenty-sixth as planned. Etna removes her coat. Samuel slides back the cuff of her dress, revealing the bracelet. He kisses the underside of her wrist. Etna closes her eyes. There is a moment, we shall imagine, when neither of them moves. Then caution is abandoned.
(The reader must imagine the details of Etna’s subsequent deflowering for himself. I haven’t the heart to describe them.)
Later, lying on a rug in Asher’s study, Etna tells Asher that she will leave the unfortunate Mr. Bass. Asher tells Etna she must not do that. In the aftermath of passion, he has the clearer head of the two of them; a fickle sense of honor is reasserting itself. He tells her he cannot allow her to disgrace herself in such a way. There is no future, he insists. There is only the moment they now have together.
Etna, somewhat bewildered, acquiesces to her new lover.
Etna and Asher meet three times that week in Samuel’s rooms, discovering in each other a sexual compatibility so intense as to be almost frightening. On the fourth meeting, just before the term is to resume, Etna once again says she will break her engagement. Samuel is alternately angry and distraught. His own wedding is only a month away. He has a job and a fiancée waiting for him in Toronto. He then tells Etna he is a Jew.
Etna, either so besotted that she doesn’t care about the import of the revelation, or else the true daughter or her tolerant father, tells Samuel this information is of no consequence. Indeed, she loves him all the more.
They make love again (wildly? passionately? wistfully?), this time interrupted by a sound from a nearby room. A student has returned early, Samuel realizes. Etna dresses, and there is some anxiety (perhaps a comic episode here?) as Asher spirits Etna from the dormitory. Parting hastily, they each reaffirm their love.