sensual longings as it trips along the wood-pavement or is seen stepping in and out of the motor-car, cannot even lay claim to be considered as a foot. It is nothing more than a shapeless stump. So as to be able to reduce the size of her boot by one number and sport tight and tiny footwear, many females have no hesitation in sacrificing divine extremities originally fashioned by Providence to be one of the principal ornaments of woman's sacred body. The toes are forced together, until they are pressed one above the other. Jammed out of their natural direction, they bend over, shoved remorselessly in a bunch toward the shining toe-cap. The continual pressure to which they are subjected makes the little martyred digits become square-shape, without counting that they are always inflicted with a sickening series of hard and soft corns, and bunions. As to the nails-what a disaster! Some disappear entirely; the remainder are ingrowing or deformed. The silly lady of fashion is happy nevertheless, because from under her pretty petticoat she can thrust forth a microscopical shoe, to which her admirers bow down and do homage.
The Parisian Venus is always represented in naked splendour, but with black stockings. Following the same aesthetic ruling, the courtesan and the partrician pet alike, when undressing in the presence of a lover, keep on their stockings. They are to be congratulated for doing so, as the modern French female is a delightful statue, chipped at its base.
Things are different in America. There flourishes the cult of the hand as well as that of the foot. Yankee boots are rationally modelled, allowing the toes to spread out with ease; giving space for natureal development, according to admitted academical outlines. No American woman consents to put up with the torture of tight boots under any pretext whatever. She is rewarded by being without agonising corns or other excruciatingly painful excrescences of the same family. She takes as much care of her feet as of her hands, and when she kicks off her slippers, lover and artist feel unalloyed delight. “Foot-flirtation” is the lascivious coquetry of the beautiful up-to-date Stars and Stripes siren, offering to the gluttonous, loving lips of her betrothed sweetheart or her chosen suitor that maddening, intimate plaything-her naked foot.
The smart set in New York often organise prize beauty contests for feminine feet. These “Tribly” competitions cause painters, sculptors and refined adorers of the fair sex to foregather enthusiastically.
In a vast hall, the pretty competing charmers are unseen by a picked jury. The Yankee goddesses are behind a curtain. Their naked feet, resting on little cushions, are alone visible. The sight is a wonderful one-a delicate treat for connaisseurs of true feminine beauty. The ladies taking part in the contest, nearly all belong to the Four Hundred; or the high society of multi-millionaires; but middle class beauties are also eligible, as well as the pick of the basket of bejewelled “kept” women.
The jurymen are sometimes in a quandary. They have to award the prize-a heavy bangle of massive gold, incrusted with diamonds, forming an ornament to be worn round the ankle to the best pair of impeccable feet they can see, judged from an academical standpoint. The following important points are deserving of the highest award, when found united: white, smooth skin' absolute perfection of the nails, rounded and almond-shaped, like those of the hands; while the carnation of the heels and tops of the toes is also not to be overlooked.
I ought to have advised Miss Rosey to take part in a New York “Tribly” contest, and among American women I have known, I often met with many adorable little feet, worthy of the suffrage of the most fastidious and exacting jury.
Every time I met ravishing Rosey in my lodgings, my whole frame was voluptuously stirred as I glanced at her little shoes hiding her delicious marvels. My mouth watered, impatient to drink in the intoxicating scented taste of paradisiacal fruit.
Day after day went by much too slowly for me, waiting impatiently for that happy Thursday when I was to sate my lascivious appetite during a long afternoon of joy, satisfying my furious cravings to be forced to suffer and start under the divine caress of the rod.
“Now, boy,” Miss Rosey told me, “don't worry all the time about those birches you forgot. One of my lady friends, whose husband is a fervent votary of flagellation and who she flogs daily, has promised me a few of her real good, green rods such as she gets for dutiful hubby. She's also going to buy me a riding-whip, exactly the same as she uses. It appears her old man howls and leaps in the air when she cuts him with it. I'm so happy! At last I shall be able to flog you properly!”
Miss Rosey's features were illuminated; her eyes sparkled joyously; still more intense pinky colour came into her cheeks; and her little nostrils palpitated. Only to look at her and listen as she spoke made me beside myself. The promise of this festival of flagellation; the fulfillment of my most deeply-hidden desires was rendered more heavenly by the knowledge that this entrancing girl was as pleased as I was, if not more.
Three days had yet to pass before the memorable day of joy. I had all my work cut out to support being deprived of my birching nourishment until then. To enable me to curb my impatience, I had paid a visit to the flat of Nelly Lamb. Her door was closed. The adorable goddess was away on a journey, and would only return the next day.
Another night and half a day of languishing expectation and I rushed to the hall of pillars.
Again I was permitted to gaze upon her enthroned in the sumptuous setting that suited her so well. Affable and smiling as ever, she was really wonderfully beautiful in a Greek peplum. She looked like a lining statue.
“Friend,” she said, “could you sleep calmly all these ling nights without my image troubling your rest?”
“Divinity,” I replied, “you deserted your temple. I returned and knocked at your door in vain.”
“I allowed myself to be carried off by a handsome Russian prince,” she said. “he took me to the borders to see the ocean.”
She went on to tell that a Muscovite nobleman came to see her once a year, about this time of year. He always passed a few days with her in a superb villa that he hired on the sea-shore. Possessed by the passion of the birch, he forced himself to fly from her, so as not to die under her rod. She had to flog him for hours together. He was never tired of begging to be scourged. Luckily, she knew how to satisfy him, and to that end, displayed indefatigable energy.
At night, when he slept, she would lift off the bedclothes, and wielding the instrument of torture with artistic, delicate, make him moan for joy in the dreamland of flagellation. His nerves vibrated like the strings of a harp beneath the touch of her agile fingers, forcing him to experience such exquisite profound manly enjoyment, that she had to restrain herself and graduate the effect of her penance, so as to keep him always floating on the surface of the sensuous stream, not letting him fall into the hidden concupiscent caverns of the dangerous depths of too great voluptuous pain.
He would then set sail for Europe, exhausted by these successive shocks of unique and stirring salacity. Once at home in Russia, he used to write her letters which were real poems of passion accompanying his epistles with precious stones beyond price, dug from mines of his own in Siberia where he was master of ten thousand slaves. The prince was young and gloriously handsome-a demigod-diaphanously pale, like an agate, and flaming gold spangles sparkled in his eyes. Nelly loved him madly, but they did not dare live together. Their mutual sensual intoxication was so great that they must both have succumbed. To protect the lovers against the overflow of their great happiness, it was necessary that two continents and the ocean should separate them.
CHAPTER XII
My beautiful acquaintance, Nelly Lamb, threw herself back on the sofa. Her magnificent arms, folded under her neck, caused the undulating lines of her sinuous body to be seen to the greatest advantage.
Real healthy blood coursed beneath the marble of the divine figure. I could see her armpits, where no luxuriant tuft threw any dark shadow to mar the statue's purity.
In silence I gazed at her. She suddenly rose to her feet.
“Tender friend,” she murmured, “today you'll not escape me. I will have you groaning at my feet, plunging as you feel the burning kisses of my rods. You need the birch. I see that in your eyes.”
She thrust her lovely foot toward me.
“Untie my sandals, darling friend,” she said, “so that I may shudder at the contact of your hot lips on my flesh.”
I immediately rushed to undo the knotted, pale-blue ribbon, terminating in a bow above the ankle, and which separated her big toe from the others. Soon, the sweet, twin, pink marble wonders and their nails as brilliant as
