His sincere outpouring, coupled with his meek posturing, only helped dwarf his persona in her esteem shaped by the imagery of male élan. As he looked pygmean in her perception then, she felt as though she was rudely shaken from her daydream. All the reservations her intuition envisaged about him earlier that she recanted in her state of amorous anticipation seemed to return to the fore with renewed vigor. The implied compliment in his confounded state failed to flatter her, for it lacked forthrightness. What was worse, she construed his adoration as an admission of subjugation. All said and done, it was a let down she wasn’t prepared for.
“How do you like it?” he enquired while thrusting it in her hand.
“It’s nice,” she said sincerely though lacking in excitement.
Her simple gesture thrilled him no end, as it was his first experience with a woman. As he narrated in detail all the trouble he took to acquire it, being bored, she stopped listening. Preoccupied as he was with his own sentiment, he failed to notice the jadedness his present left on her sensitivity as twirling the thing, she felt as if she were slighted by it. That it should have obsessed him so much, at a time when she was available for his possession hurt her sensuality.
‘If only he’s passionate,’ she thought dejectedly, ‘I wouldn’t be holding this cold thing.’ She felt as though the diamond edges of that nose-stud cruelly clipped the sprouting romantic wings her heart started airing by then.
“Let me see how it goes with you,” he said eagerly as he was impatient to espy her glamour adorned by his present.
“I always knew it would suit you,” he said with a relish, as she obliged him becomingly. “You know, I went from shop to shop for it.”
‘Oh,’ she felt irritated, ‘what’s the god-damn obsession with an inane thing,’, and the very thought of life in the offing with him depressed her no end. She even developed second thoughts about broaching her passion to study medicine.
‘But won’t life be dull idling at home,’ she reasoned in the end, ‘that too being his wife? Moreover, who knows, he might as well oblige. And if he does, won’t I end up loving him out of gratitude. Well, any way, I’ve nothing more to lose now.’
“I wanted to ask you…’
“Be assured, you’re the first woman in my life,” he declared solemnly and felt pleased for assuaging her perceived doubts about his own virginity.
‘Hardly surprising,’ she thought derisively only to end up feeling it was a sort of consolation. Thereby, without much ado, she revealed her ambition with animation, and appealed enticingly, “I know you love me enough to help me out.”