come.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I thought that your father was a man of considerable wealth.”
She looked at me quickly, then dropped her eyes and for a moment we were both silent. Then a blush crept over her face, startling me.
I thought at first that it was just my sudden closeness that brought a flush to her cheeks, the unexpected touch of my hand. Then I realized that my engine had begun to stiffen and I could not control its rising-a rising she could hardly have failed to notice.
A wave of mad desire swept over me and my hand left her shoulder and went exploring beneath her chemise, cupping her right breast very firmly for an instant and then quickly releasing it.
To my astonishment she said not a word, but sat perfectly still, as if she had anticipated the swift descent of my hand and neither resented nor took pleasure in it.
Having gone so far I saw no reason to desist and lowering my head began passionately to kiss her neck and shoulders, while my hand descended for the second time, and took firm hold of her breast. This time I squeezed it, and ran my forefinger back and forth across her nipple to see if it had hardened. Seemingly it had, but only slightly, and the stiffening could have been caused by nothing more than the friction of my digital massage.
It was strange and disappointing, for all this time she had said not a word. Had I started in the wrong way and could it be that she resented the fact that I had not immediately raised her dress and exposed more fully the beautifully shaped limbs whose country girl sturdiness I had so much admired? Had she been secretly hoping that I would explore their whiteness as well, and that my hand would travel swiftly up her thighs until it came to rest on a moist and hairy mound? Had she been anticipating just such a caress?
She still had said not a word, and my libidinous-ness had now become so fierce that I could no longer continue with the fondling of her breasts and the mere planting of kisses on her shoulders as I sought to arouse in her a responsiveness that she seemed totally to lack.
“You are very beautiful, my dear,” I whispered and would have waited a few seconds longer if she had not remained as stonily impassive as a mannequin beneath the administrations of a dressmaker whose only concern is the proper fitting of clothes on a form that is the opposite of alive.
She spoke then, for the first time. “What you are doing is silly,” she said. “If you must have me, the sofa is the best place for it.”
Amazed and no longer able to contain myself-my instrument was as stiff as a board-I turned her around and rained kisses all over her face and throat. Then I took her by the arm, guided her to the sofa and pushed her back upon it.
When I started to raise her dress she gripped my wrist tightly and I thought for a moment she was intent on forcing me to desist before my hand traveled to her cleft or I straightway mounted her. But no-her intention was quite otherwise. She guided my hand upwards until my fingers became entwined in Venushair, and assisted me as well by pulling up her dress until none of her charms remained hidden, from her ankles to her opened thighs.
What happened then was accomplished more quickly than I could have wished, but I was beside myself with desire for her and could no longer exercise restraint.
I mounted her without first exploring the circle of delight and we were so quickly entwined that when the violence of our movements increased we reached a climax simultaneously and she relaxed with a long-drawn sigh.
She did not move again until I arose without looking at her-just why I could not have said-and walked across the room to the washstand to apply lavage to my now limp member. I heard her stirring on the sofa, but did not turn until she said: “I must go now. Father will be wondering why I have remained so long in your room when I came only to deliver a letter.”
She was sitting up when I swung about to face her, her clothes completely rearranged and a look,in her eyes that astonished me. I can only describe it as coldly calculating.
Before I could reply she went on quickly: “I have not attempted to hide anything from you. My father, as I have said, is desperately poor and the rent which he receives from the rooms he has been forced to let out barely pays for what is taken from us in taxes. Do you think-I know that you are a gentlemen of modest means-that two crowns would be too much to ask for the pleasure I have just afforded you?”
I saw then that she was holding out her hand- actually extending it toward me-as if in anticipation of a bounty she seemed convinced would be forthcoming.
Cursing myself for a fool, and making no attempt to hide the rage that had come upon me, I unlocked my writing desk, removed the two crowns from an upper drawer, and placed them on her palm, closing her fingers tightly over them.
“Here, my girl,” I said. “I am far from convinced that your father would go to the poorhouse if your lodgers were less generous. But I have never failed to pay a debt of this nature, for I am a man of conscience, and you did indeed render me some pleasure.”
I expected that she would leap up, and depart in sullen anger, for what I had said was more than insulting. But to my great surprise she merely smiled amiably, arose and walked out of the room without a backward glance, closing the door firmly behind her.
For five full minutes I paced the floor, with steadily mounting bitterness. I had made the mistake of thinking that, however amorously inclined she may have been, there was no trace of whorish-ness in her nature and her initial silence and blushing response to my restrained attempts at seduction had strengthened my belief in her innocence. The wanton way she had behaved on the sofa had not dispelled that belief, for I had assumed that she had been carried away by the passion my less restrained love-making had aroused in her and had pursued her pleasure, as I had mine, with no thought of commercial gain.
It was another reason, surely, for wishing to put London forever behind me-for three or four years, at the very least. I had had my fill of London women, successful as most of my conquests had been. All too often when you thought them generous to a fault, responsive to your every whim, tender and yielding, they turned out to be either whores at heart, or capable of limitless cruelty. Even whores can bestow upon a man an infinite variety of pleasures and for their many kindnesses I was profoundly grateful. I would have that clearly understood. I adore all women and would rather die in the embrace of a strumpet with no kindness in her nature than live in a world without women.
But must London forever keep a man from traveling a wider road to paradise, must the whims of English women alone concern him night and day, and inflict, for all the rapture that they bestow, a corresponding degree of torment?
I have often thought that the fog which has enshrouded London so many months in every year of which we have knowledge-was there ever a time when London was bathed in continuous sunlight? — has laid a curse upon all lovemaking, making it secretive and much too furtive, despite everything that has been written and said to the contrary.
The wide world beckoned, where kisses were more freely bestowed than anywhere in Europe and a man was not required to walk a tightrope between desire and satiety.
I thought of the women who live in cages in the larger cities of the South American continent and paint their faces blue, red and yellow. How strange and fascinating it must be to stop before such a cage on a street of prostitutes and look into the amorous eyes of women so exotic in aspect? Why should rouge alone be used by English women who pursue the same profession in a less inventive way?
Variety and change-what was to prevent me from taking full advantage of my modest but by no means niggardly income to enlarge my knowledge of how the most ancient of games is played, where all of our English rules are laughed to scorn?
And why should they not be laughed to scorn, when it is only when one ceases to kneel in fear before the pleasure-destroying scepter of a knavish fool in a land where Fog is King that one is free to be driven wild by the many delights of the dark and rejoice in the strength and persistence of that most untiring instrument of pleasure that has been given many names, but none that I like better than the Jolly Playfellow. In England it is often the opposite of jolly when it is inserted in a wench who lives in fear and trembling, dreading every knock on the door and as often as not holding out her hand for a crown or a farthing when the play is ended, precisely as my late visitor had done.
Pay and be gone is as often the rule as the exception, and nothing can make a fine upstanding member shrink more quickly and refuse to rise again than the impatience or scorn of a cruelly calculating woman, submitting with
