`` we always find time for that , '' she said , and laughed , and blushed , and her eyes were dark in the lamplight and it threw a warm , semicircular shadow between her breasts , and he knew then that he was going to give in to her , he would have promised her a fifteen-hundred-dollar zenith console model if she would just let him make love to her again , and at the thought he felt himself stiffening , felt the snake turning to stone , as mary had once said when she 'd had a little too much to drink at the ridpaths ' new year 's eve party ( and now , eighteen years later , he felt the snake turning to stone again-over a memory ) .