"If that's so you shall have a reward." So saying, she half-opened the door and peeped in distrustfully. Tranquillised, she then came right in.
She was dressed in beach pyjamas: a jersey, a bolero and broad trousers, — a white ensemble braided with blue. The particular shade of that blue, in complete harmony with that of her eyes, increased their brilliancy. Pushing aside the bolero, her breasts stretched the thin material of the jersey and brought into prominence their twin nipples.
A large, supple straw hat shaded her blond hair, gathered up into a heavy chignon. I found my wife adorably beautiful and youthful, — so much so that my stiffened penis, throbbing with desire, rose to salute her. Just for a moment I stopped her on the threshold. "Stop there a moment, darling, so that I may admire your ensemble."
"In such a get-up as this, you find me grotesque, don't you? The Carnival of Nice on tour."
"Oh! not at all, — the Cortege of Venus. Or rather Venus herself descended on Earth."
She rushed towards me, her bosom thrust forward and hands in a threatening attitude, and, in a voice imitative of the Ogre, declaimed:
"C'est Venus tout entiere a sa proie attached."
Then, throwing herself on my bed, she covered my face and neck with kisses. Soon her hands were drawing down the sheet ("To see if I'd not told her a fib!") and this preliminary inspection was satisfactory, since the top of my pyjamas was chastely buttoned up. But after a while she was on the verge of discovering something most indecent: the ruddy extremity of my bare penis.
I was bound, however, to stop that and save her eyes from the brutal revelation of the ruttish condition in which I was, for that might have been most repugnant to her. I know that others would have consented, without making the slightest fuss; but those are the people who make women passively subject to their lust, or else those prostitutes whose venality surmounts all feeling of disgust. If, on the other hand, I wanted my wife, some day, to be as enamoured over the violence of my sex as full of tender pity for a penis exhausted by the love-act, — if I wished to awaken in her a confiding and caressing passion for my very flesh, other precautions were called for. I must first of all explain and guide her hand before surrendering myself to her visual caresses. But my will-power had broken down completely: mighty waves of lust flowed from my loins to my brain and overwhelmed me.
As when in a state of dizziness, it was the very sense of danger which attracted me, — the Sadistic expectation of Therese's astonishment. At other moments, however, the waves of desire calmed down to a silent prayer. I wanted to say to Therese:
"You still know hardly anything about my body. Look at it! Be gentle with my impatient sex, as I was gentle last night with your so intimately excited flesh. Fear not! — all that I want is to surrender myself into your hands. And should you excite me to the point of orgasm, I will tenderly draw a veil over your eyes."
Meanwhile, the hand which had drawn down the sheet had descended below my waist and reached the point where my pyjamas began to be half-open. Therese caught sight of a triangular morsel of flesh, and, in its close proximity to my sex, already hairy. Her breathing quickened.
Her arm made a lascivious movement and then she clenched her hand.
But she immediately recovered herself. So as not to have to recognize a fault on my part, she quickly drew the sheet over the fleshly triangle.
Again what she saw of my attire was perfectly decent and she congratulated me on it. "That is quite all right: you are indeed most proper." She had not understood-or did not want to notice-the too apparent erection of my Phallus, a little lower down, under the sheet.
With feigned gravity, she then proclaimed:
"Under the terms of the powers conferred upon me, as much by the Deputy Mayor as by Monsieur l'Cure, I will now bestow a reward upon you."
Suiting the action to the word, she stripped my shoulders and body to the waist, to repeat upon me the entire varied gamut of her caresses.
But this disturbing interlude lasted barely a quarter of an hour, — an abnormally brief period of time, compared to the customary duration of our love-feasts. Suddenly Therese stopped: her hand returned to the triangular piece of flesh she had glimpsed a short time before; she found it and slightly enlarged it, fumbling about on my stomach in search of my navel. When she had found it she hid her tongue in it for a few seconds. Finally, with a quick movement, she pulled the sheet right up to my chin and rose to her feet.
"You don't really imagine, my dear Lord and Master," she proclaimed,
"that you are going to be decorated with the Grand Cross of the Order of Caresses, because you have been fairly decent? Nay!.. You have merited only a decoration of the 3rd Class. The ceremony is concluded.
So get up at once, you bad lot!"
"Right-o! Right-o! I obey."
I made a movement as though to jump out of bed, notwithstanding what she might be able to guess as regards the disorder of my attire.
But she screamed out:
"Stop! Stop! — Rascal! Let me get out first."
She took to her heels, laughing the while. A few moments later, the sound of her voice came from the garden:
"I'll await you under the lindens, where I shall be reading. But I like to read you better than a book."
"Thank you!"
"Only, you're a naughty book, and I hesitate to turn over the pages."
"Ah! I know a pretty little book the whole of whose pages I've turned over."
"Silence! — ungrateful monster!"
And in order to drown my voice she began, with a "Tralala, la, la!" to sing the revolutionary air from Louise.
How cheerful she was! I thought that recollections of the previous night would have made her more serious that morning. If, momentarily, she was almost sorrowfully dazed by the revelation of intense pleasure, the recollection of it had calmed down to a feeling of confident surrender. For I had been able to guide her (without either offending her delicacy or ravaging her flesh) to the very threshold of the intoxicating kingdom of voluptuousness. And at last, rid of all fear, she was now vibrating with joyous impatience, similar to a child who, on coming to the end of an unknown road, suddenly discovers the blue expanse of the sea, glittering in the morning sun.
CHAPTER IX
I descended into the garden and, with the intention of surprising her, advanced with the precautions of a Red Indian. The gravel crunched under my feet treacherously. Therese, with her back turned to the house, pretended not to hear me; yet she kept her blond head bent down: a victim presenting her neck to the executioner. So upon it I deposited a long and greedy kiss. Therese thrilled with joy and burst into a ripple of laughter.
Seeing that the book upon her knees was closed, I asked her:
"Have you read much?"
"Much? No. But very conscientiously. I've read the same half-page ten times."
"You have been learning it by heart?"
"I tried merely to understand. But I never got to the end of the sentence."
"Absent-minded? — because of me?"
"By no means, conceited man! My absent-mindedness was the fruitful one of great thinkers. I'm Thomas Aquinus, Newton, Einsteinwhoever you like. I've made a great discovery."
"Bless my soul! And what may you have discovered?"
"That the Almighty is marvellously intelligent and that his Creation is not so badly managed. Moreover, I've told Him so while you left me to my solitude. And I've presented humble apologies to Him for having believed that the world consisted of my silly life as a young girl."
"Not so silly as that."
"Oh! yes, — it was stupid. Do you know what I resembled, without knowing it? I was like those idiotic tourists who, in their Pullman cars, read their newspapers, or snooze, — wholly unaware that, behind the lowered blinds, there lies the whole of Provence singing in the sun."