“Why! You've come too, Lilian!” I exclaimed, in delighted rapture, as soon as I regained my senses.
“Yes! How do you know?”
“I felt you spend!”
She was still under the influence of the feeling that the onanistic play had excited in her, and she threw herself furiously upon me and, taking my head in her hands, thrust her mad tongue down my throat, and sucked my lips until she took my breath away.
She was a real woman at that moment of her life, inasmuch as she adored the male, with the true evidence of the force of his desire pointing to heaven and would have let a man do anything to her, and she would have done anything to his body.
She rose and fetched a clean dish-cloth from the adjoining kitchen, as she said she did not dare go upstairs to get a towel. She carefully wiped away all traces of the recent spermatic eruption, and we settled down for a talk, after she had got me some brandy and water.
She looked over the second volume of Justine, and enjoyed the pictures. A little packet was ready for me, containing the first volume, and also Flossie, The Yellow Room, Colonel Spanker's Lecture, The Horn Book, and The Convent School.
And then we spoke of marriage, and I talked about her virginity, narrowly watching her expressive face the while. I told her that our voluptuous games were all very well in their way, but if I lived beneath the same roof with her for a few days, I should most surely have complete connection.
“Indeed,” I added, “you, Lilian, would ask me yourself to make you a woman.”
I saw again the troubled, puzzled look come into her eyes; there was an expression of pain in her face and she leant her cheek on her clenched hand, which was tightly clasped.
“Should I? Tell me more, Jacky. Talk to me. I like to hear you.”
I told her how delicious the nuptial tie must be, when both man and wife really love each other, when there is no disgust, no repugnance. On the other hand, how horrible for a girl to be thrown into the arms of a brutal male, who violates her on the first night, and perhaps makes her hate the approach of a man ever afterwards.
“Yes, that must be horrible!”
A change came over her. She looked angry, worried, pained, and disgusted, and seemed full of regret. A confession was trembling on her lips. She looked at me with melting eyes, and then they flashed fire. As I spoke, she seemed angry with herself and with me. A pause, a sigh, and she regained her self-possession, entrusted me with Papa's commissions in Paris and gave me the money to get them done. She lost her temper, and began worrying me about the plan to spend Sunday with her. I refused once more, and complained vaguely of her conduct towards me during the past winter and how unreasonable she was even now.
“Would you have sent for me, if I had not written my last letter?”
She was turning over the pages of Justine as I spoke, and she looked up at me with a wondering, wandering look in her fine brown eyes, and these words dropped languidly from her fevered lips, tired by a long series of wet kisses:
“I don't know!”
“I read you so well. I know how bad you are, and yet I am here. It is a great struggle between this”-I touched my penis-“and this”-I placed my hand to my forehead.
“But how about that?” and she put her hand on my heart.
“Never mind that, I won't tell you anything more. I'll say nothing.”
“I suppose you think I am not worthy to listen to you? Or perhaps that I cannot understand?”
“Perhaps. Anyhow, you will find out one day how I loved you, and later on I shall have my revenge. Oh! Not as you think; I shall never harm you. Other men will avenge me. When you shall have been jeered at, mocked, and sullied; forced to smile, when some syphilitic wretch shall have made you sick with his pestilential breath; crushed beneath the weight of a monster, covered perchance with eczema; sweating; stinking; you will retch with disgust, and between two fits of vomiting, softly in the night you'll cry bitter tears, and despite yourself, my name will come from your lips, yet burning from the pressure of the hated mouth. You will call for me: 'Jacky! Jacky!' And he will not be there!”
“But I shall never have anything to do with monsters, so that can't happen to me!”
I looked at the clock. I just had time to catch the last train.
“Oh! Of course, there you are looking at the time. You are tired of me already.”
I sat down again and listened as she told me to see about some seats for the Opéra Comique, the new building which had only been inaugurated in December. She wished to go with her first workwoman, I think. I departed, and lamp in hand, she opened the door to me, but could come no farther, as a perfect storm of wind and rain was now raging.
“I shall look forward to your visit on Sunday.”
“Not Sunday, please, Lilian.”
“Yes, or you will see how angry I shall be.”
“Not Sunday, my darling.”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
The glow of the lamp showed me her black and sullen frowning face, as she closed the door angrily. Through the blinding rain, I ran to the station. The last train had left, just five minutes before and I was stranded about ten miles from Paris.
I turned back and tried two infamous inns, to see if I could get a bed for the night. The first one never answered, and at the second, a ferocious dog drove me away.
It was no use lamenting. I had half a mind to return to the villa, but I was fearful lest Lilian should be unable to hear me, or that I might wake the servant, or Granny; so I started to walk. The ten or eleven miles did not frighten me, but the road was far from being safe. To be stabbed, or thrown into a river or a canal for a few pounds, is not very nice. I thought of this, as I stumbled along all in the dark, my little parcel of books in my hand, and Lilian's money in my pocket. I lost my way, regained it, slipped and fell in the mud, and as I picked myself up, saw a carriage approaching. I had walked two or three miles. I asked for a lift to Paris. Luckily for me, it was an empty brougham going to Pantin only. I arranged to give the man five francs, and I jumped in and found a rug on the seat. I lit a cigar and made myself comfortable until I got to Pantin. The rain had ceased. I paid the man and gaily tramped through the silent streets.
Before getting into bed at about three in the morning, I opened the parcel and looked through the books. In Flossie and The Yellow Room, I found several heavy, black thumbmarks. Papa, beyond a doubt, had read these volumes with Lilian.
I laughed grimly to myself as I jumped into bed, and with a loud and merry: “Good night, Lilian!” addressed to my solitary pillow, I turned on my side and was soon snoring. But at half-past eight, I was up and dressed, and with my faithful comrade Smike was soon at the bedside of my sweet, suffering, unsuspicious mistress.