I could not but smile; I felt triumphant. There was a friend within the citadel who would hand the fortress over to me. So, for all answer, I moved my hand again. It was a most potent and convincing argument. After some inarticulate sounds, and one or two passionate movements, she cried, as I followed up my advantage and pressed the matter home:
"You must-you must-you must! How shall I lie?"
Now I was a novice, but I guessed.
"Lie down on your back on the bed, Maud, dear," and I withdrew my hand and made room for her.
"So?" enquired the charming girl as in pretty disorder she abandoned herself helpless and absolutely to the divine impulse of nature and cast herself down-her legs wide apart, her petticoats up to her knees.
I gazed enraptured at her lovely uncovered limbs in their stockings and lace drawers, at her heaving bosom, at her beautiful features.
"Get between them, you naughty boy, directly. Lie down upon me this instant," extending herself to clasp me. "How dare you stay looking at me like that! Come, you naughty boy, at once-you naughty naked boy!" grasping me and drawing me on to her. Before I had time to throw myself into the Elysium beneath me she had twined her arms and legs about me and clasped me in a close and rigid embrace.
The voluptuousness of the position was most intoxicating.
My naked thighs pressed against hers underneath her skirts, ruthlessly encroaching upon the sanctuary of the feminine divinity. My breast oppressed her palpitating bosom, her throbbing form lay vanquished and confined beneath mine. No maidenly coyness, no ladylike reserve could avail her to the smallest extent now. Her face was a sweet and close prisoner which I could kiss at pleasure. I myself was a close captive between her legs, two warm round soft cushions, two wilful and unrelenting jailers grasping me with arch feminine severity.
There was a delicious scent of summer flowers emanating from her, and her violent and unembarrassed movements as she adjusted herself to her satisfaction, thrilled my sense of touch. She settled herself without the slightest hesitation or awkwardness and with a bewitchingly 119
careless disregard of me, retaining her tight grasp of my body all the while. Her magnetic power gradually stole over me and possessed me. Her touch thrilled me through and through.
"There," she ejaculated in a transport, speaking with the clear distinctness of one who knows her own mind exactly and is determined to fulfil it at all hazards, "pull my petticoats out of the way-come up closer-now, Julian — so," wriggle, wriggle, "now put it in there-at once- directly in, as you said, or-or-or-I shall squeeze you to death!"
All my fatigue, all the exhaustion caused by the discipline I had undergone vanished as if by magic. I was carried away by the realisation of my fondest dreams before me and the intensity of the physical happiness of my situation. I knew instinctively that I was on the brink of tasting the fullest earthly bliss and of draining the cup. It could not be dashed from my lips now.
It was not with the person with whom I desired it, I confess. But love is wayward and capricious, seldom giving exactly what one wishes. One must often content oneself with the good the Gods provide without insisting upon choosing for oneself. And I was so excited and Maud so lovely that this never struck me, and I do not think I should have regarded it for one moment if it had as I lay quivering in her arms.
"Oh, Julian," gasped the lovely girl as I obeyed her orders and sank into her embrace.
We blundered considerably, but perhaps this was fortunate, stimulating our ardours the more and working us up into a yet higher pitch of excitement with its continually recurrent thrills of exquisite sensation.
At last to my astonishment and alarm she cried that I was hurting her and the tone of her inarticulate expressions of pleasure changed. Her eyes were suffused with tears. I began to have misgivings as to whether 120
I was right after all. She was courageous, however, and insisted. There appeared to be some obstacle. She complained of being sore, that I was tearing her. She bit me as my mouth sought hers to silence her protests with kisses. She asked me to draw back for a moment and even tried to push me away. But my transport was such that, even had I wished, I could not have complied. Carried away by my feelings I only pressed onwards the more. I felt the climax had come and I forcibly overcame her resistance.
In a paroxysm of passion I threw myself upon her with fresh vigour and forced myself well into her despite her opposition. I felt mad, furious, like an animal which has tasted blood. The obstacle soon vanished; I burst through it; and not heeding her screams, I thrust forward inside her, holding her with my arms about her neck as in a vice, pressing her down against the bed so that she could not retreat. Throb-throb-throb, I sank onto her breast and she seemed to faint in a delirium of joy, her pain gone with the sound of her screams.
At that instant she was stamped upon my mind with such strange and astonishing vividness that I still recall it with awe and wonder.
At the moment of consummation when her response and my convulsion satisfied the hunger I had not until then known how to allay, there was a perfect picture of her impressed upon my sensorium. And as our flesh mingled it was as though I fed upon her beauty and tasted the loveliness of her ankles, her thighs, her bosom, her features, her whole form-drank it in, absorbed it, lived upon it.
This then is love I reflected, as we reposed in ecstasy in each other's arms and I gazed upon her as she lay with her head resting on my shoulder and a leg still thrown across me as if to signify that she had not yet done with me.
Would it be a boy or a girl?
Would it resemble its mother? Her swimming eyes were closed, her cherry-coloured lips open, her fragrant breath fanned my cheek. Maud, who had brought me upstairs to study anatomy objectively, with a view to moulding inanimate figures, had had a subjective lesson of the most thorough nature which would doubtless result in a perfect and living study in clay.
The Apollo Belvedere or Venus! Which would it be? Could Beatrice have intended more than her words conveyed when she had issued her prohibition?
A tap at the door. Maud, who was in a light slumber, half-awaking moved and giving me a cooing caress, again slept.
Another knock; this time louder. The sun was sinking towards the west, already faintly gilding the attendant clouds with his evening greeting.
A third knock, and a voice in alarmed, hushed tones called: "Miss Maud! Miss Maud!"
I recognised the voice. It was that of my tormentor, Elise. How I hated her. Would Maud be able to save me?
"Maud," I said gently, putting my hand on her shoulder. "There is Elise. Let me send her away."
"Who-what-eh?" murmured Maud, startled. "Elise- oh, Julian!" and overcome with love, she gave me a hug.
"Miss Maud! Miss Maud!" again cried Elise. "Whatever are you about? Make haste and let me in at once. Mademoiselle has just returned."
"Goodness gracious!" exclaimed Maud, startled and thoroughly awake now, and thoroughly frightened also. "Whatever shall I do, Julian?" she asked, starting up. And then she shouted: "All right, Elise; in one moment," adding to me: "Jump up, Julian; jump up and let me put myself straight."
I had knelt up.
"Great heavens!" I exclaimed, terrified and in horror. "Look there, Maud."
Could I have been right after all? Her chemise and the coverlet of the bed were drenched with blood. Whatever should we do? Maud turned white, but her presence of mind did not desert her.
"Let Elise in at once; it is the only thing we can do. She will know."