It seemed to her that he was deliberately sounding her code of morality before making the proposition which she felt was imminent if she continued to see him. She could no longer disguise from herself that he wanted her, and that her own instinct was not one of flight. Had she met him before she had gone on the stage she would have estimated his feelings toward her correctly, seen that he was honorably attracted to her. But her recent experiences had distorted her views about courtship. Her heart would have beaten to a different tune had she known that his motive in questioning her about Maggy was merely to ascertain her opinion on a matter which, owing to her connection with the stage, must be familiar to her. After her expressed desire to avoid it he let it drop, and turned to another, more vital to himself and her, on which he had made up his mind to speak to her that evening.
"How long must you and I go on like this?" he asked in an undertone, full of suppressed feeling.
Her heart thumped in her throat so that she could not answer.
"I mean," he said, "that it's not very satisfying seeing you so occasionally. It's true we haven't known one another very long as time goes, but it has been long enough for me to realize my own feelings. I want you. Those three words mean everything that a man can say to a woman. What is your answer?"
The surge of feeling, the thrill she experienced as he said "I want you," left her in no doubt as to her own emotions. She not only loved, she loved without reservation, with a magnitude so huge that it seemed as though a transport of yearning were being pumped into her by some external Titanic force. And it came from him, the man facing, close to her. She heard the clarion cry of sex for the first time in a crowded restaurant, where she could not even cover her face with her hands and so hide her besieged virginity from the sight of men. She could only sit still and feel her shame creeping into her face. Maggy, glancing her way every now and then, saw the agitation that was moving her and thought she was going to faint.
"Lexie's ill!" she whispered anxiously, and was about to get up and go to her.
Woolf's hand detained her. He had been watching Meer, and also seen Alexandra's face.