may guess the sequel. Her features were hidden somewhat by the light brown tresses which lapped about her collar. Yet as she sat upon her heels and viewed the scene in the bedroom, Marit's slim young hand was thrust within the waist of her pants at the front. Her fingers were moving with a most lascivious knowingness between her slender thighs.
Though I could not quite see her face for the silken waves of hair falling about her features, I was certain of her mood all the same, if only from the manner in which her glossy young hair trembled and the gasps which issued from her! Do not condemn her too easily, Augustus. Desire is strong at fourteen or fifteen and yet the proper conduct of society requires that its yearnings must be repressed by its elders. How else, then, is Marit to relieve her feelings? I know that she spends much of the day at cafe tables with girls and boys of her own age. Yet I cannot believe that she has ever so much as had her hand inside a boy's pants to feel his budding manhood. Nor, I think, has a boy ever had his own hand in her knickers to fondle the warmth between her thighs or the cool little orbs of Marit's bottom-cheeks. So the little minx worked herself harder and harder, until at last the spasm came upon her. She shuddered as if with horror and yet surely the pleasure was exquisite. Indeed, she was so overcome that she sank down and lay upon the tiles, hugging her knees to her breasts and her fingers busy in her panties all over again! What momentous events are passing in the Villa Lola, dear cousin! What stories I may have to tell you by the time that I despatch my next letter to England! Your own loving Maude Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude VI. Augustus to Lady Maude Wight, 14 June, afternoon My dearest Maude, I received your letter with its charming and most amusing anecdote of Miss Jones. Yet I fear, my dear cousin, that I am hardly a good audience for such tales just now. To tell you the truth, I do not know whether to rejoice or despair. I have devoted my time to finding out all that I can about Julie, where she lives and what time she may be seen in the street or at her work in the bookshop. To what purpose is all this? I have discovered that she has a lover with whom she shares her rooms. I had feared this and was quite sure that it must be a hulking fellow in whose company I had seen her from time to time. I was wrong. She has a lover but, believe me, it is another girl! You see my predicament? I do not know whether that makes my situation better or worse. Is a woman a more dangerous rival for me than a man? I cannot tell and do not know how to begin finding out.
The girl, like so many common sluts here, is one of Mr. Bowler's young whores. You may see her and a number of others busying themselves as you pass the doors of one of his shops. This creature is named Sian and I daresay you know her. She has a mop of lightly waved reddish hair and a white-skinned look. Her eyes are a light blue, her cheekbones slanting and her chin rather weak with a painted little bud of a mouth. She is not particularly tall and her look is of a slack and sluttish girl. I am no purist in such matters, however. Were it not for my rivalry with the girl-my aversion, needless to say-I would allow that Sian has that characteristic Celtic beauty of pale skin, reddish hair which always seems to make skin even whiter, and blue eyes which sometimes look dark from the manner in which she applies the mascara brush to their lashes. Her figure at twenty years old is at that desirable stage of rounding softly but without showing the degree of plumpness which will one day mar her outline. Under a snug singlet one sees the resilience of her cherry-topped breasts.
When Sian bends over in her cotton working-pants of pale grey-blue, she tightens them skin-smooth over thighs that are still trim and bottom cheeks which are still tautly rounded with the elasticity of youth. I had watched her in this posture a day or two before, the cotton so tight at the seat that one easily saw the ridge which mapped the outline of Sian's knickers. Do not think I am blind, then, to her attractions. Yet there is no torture I would shrink from imposing as a punishment for her seduction of Julie's innocence. I swear I have seen Sian wearing a wedding- ring. If she has regular exercise on the staff of a husband or boyfriend, what excuse is there for her depravity with another girl? It is not the helpless inclination of a born lesbian but a matter of calculated lechery. What right has she to enjoy the pleasures of Julie's bed when my own passion burns unrequited? I will not give up the pursuit of my beloved-rest assured of that. I have rented a common lodging across the street from her own, the better to lay siege. Its upper window commands a view into all her rooms, so that I may survey the object of my desires as well as the machinations of my rival. Before you cry alarm at my obsession and write to Dr. Raspail about my condition, let me inform you that all my suspicions have proved well founded, as I saw for myself last night. Would you credit it? Thinking this room of mine unoccupied, the two girls did not so much as draw a curtain over any window. I saw all that passed as clearly as if then in the best box at the theatre and they performing on the stage a dozen feet from me!
But first you may be sure I had not missed the opportunity of taking many a view of Julie during the day, while she sat on her stool behind the shop counter in her plain black dress and coquettish little red shoes. I watched her as, having changed into the working pants of tight denim, she lifted the books and filled the shelves again. At a discreet distance, I followed her through the streets on her route to the rooms where Sian waited. How I adored the spread of her fine golden-blond hair on her shoulders as it rose and fell a little with the rhythm of her agile steps! How my eyes caressed her slender thighs in the skin-tightness of smooth faded denim which creased across their backs and behind her knees at each movement. Though she is, I hear, nineteen years old, Julie's thighs have the endearingly fragile look of a little girl's. My desires grew harder as I watched in the tight denim seat the lewd little movements, while she walked, of the saucy little cheeks of Julie's bottom! When we came to the narrow street, I hurried up to my window and sat there discreetly behind the curtain. Every room opposite was open to my view-bedroom and kitchen, even toilet and bathroom-so little did they imagine themselves to be observed and so little, perhaps, did they care. Sian was watching for her girlfriend's arrival. I saw the image of her face and the short tresses of red hair shaped about her head and lying here and there on her forehead. In anticipation of the passion and seduction to come, she had darkened the lashes of her blue eyes with the mascara brush and painted red the sensuous little bud of her lips. With her pert young nose and the slight weakness of her chin, she appears the most blatant sensualist. They met at the door of the sitting-room and at once slid their arms about each other in a writhing and smoothing embrace. Each of them seemed to be trying to stifle the other with the pressure of mouth upon mouth. Sian, the tendrils of dark red hair lying over her brow, was quite shamelessly unbuttoning Julie's blouse with all the moist eagerness of frustrated passion. In a moment more her hands had firmed up those pert little breasts which I vow ought only to be accessible to my own adoring hands. I was so vexed, Maude! So very vexed that I cannot describe my state of mind with any lucidity. It pains me even to recall my feelings then.
They led one another off, with arms twined lewdly round waists and heads resting together, pausing to kiss and nuzzle at every few steps. The door from the bathroom to the toilet opened and Julie went in, undoing her pants in preparation. At least, I thought, the door would be shut and she would be separated from Sian for a few minutes.
Perhaps I would contrive some scheme for getting the slut with the mop of red hair into my power by then. I was so enraged, my dearest, that I trembled afterwards at the images which had occurred to me. Yet I cannot say I regretted what I would have done to Sian if fate had delivered her to me in some harem from which no scandal ever emerges.
How I hated her painted little mouth and her round chin, the slant of her cheekbones and the way she mascara'd the lashes of her wide blue eyes. I raged at the mop of red hair trimmed short where it just lapped over her collar, its stray plumes falling on her brow. I would have handed the leather strangling-strap to my major-domo and ordered him to do his worst to Sian. Vain dreams, indeed, and yet most agreeable to me in my jealous fury-and surely justified by what I saw.
The door of the toilet did not close. Sian and Julie both entered.
Julie sat on the pedestal with her knickers round her ankles and released her flood on the porcelain. All the time, Sian hung over her and browsed with lips on lips. Julie sat a little longer while her friend busied round her. Then I saw that my treasure was winding her golden blond hair into a strand, holding it forward from the crown.
With Sian's aid she once more pinned it into that delightful little top-knot which gives her the look of such a saucy little madam of a child! Even before Julie rose from the pedestal, Sian knelt before her and removed the panties and denim which were round her ankles. To my fury she seemed to be telling Julie, in a sly and sluttish manner, that she would need to wear nothing of that kind again this evening and that indeed she might not be permitted to. I wonder, Maude. Do you suppose it could be contrived for the sharp bodkin point to enter Sian's belly button at such a snail's pace that she might live a whole day and night upon it? I cannot wish for less that that! I watched them return kisses again. Now it was Sian who undid her pants and sat upon the pedestal. I tell you, Maude, I nearly swooned with horror when I saw how she had led my girl astray.
For now it was Julie who hovered over Sian, lips to lips, while the redhead pressed the pale softness of her hips and bottom on the seat and then let loose such a flood upon the porcelain. Is the world mad? Has decency
