Ridlington in the conservatory have given me a great insight into the mystery of female feelings, into the sensations of a woman when bestowing her choicest favours. And what I have yet to relate has deepened this insight. But although I can understand her coveting exclusive possession, I have never been able to regard it as reasonable.
'No,' repeated Maud. 'Then how can you know? Do you mean Mademoiselle told you in so many words? She can never have had the face to do that!'
I was on the point of saying like a fool that I had longed to do it to Mademoiselle and so found out, but I stopped in time.
'She gave me a psychological lesson and I discovered it incidentally,' I said with as much nonchalance as possible.
'And what can Beatrice have meant about the Apollo? You and Bee were chums from the first. She must know.'
I confess I felt very much puzzled myself as to what Beatrice knew and the real reason for the promise she had so pertinaciously extracted from me. I recollected also that I was bound on parole to Beatrice for five years and it struck me that if she discovered what had occurred between Maud and me it would be excessively awkward for me. She would, no doubt, regard it as a breach of allegiance to her for I knew that I had for a time given myself to Maud as completely as a man can give himself to anyone and yet I was not my own to give.
These reflections seriously increased my discomfort. It was bad enough to find myself absolutely in Mademoiselle's hands and I was far from pleased at the prospect of a score to settle with Beatrice as well. Strange to say I felt more disturbance on her account than on Mademoiselle's, and I explain the fact by Beatrice's possessing much more control over my spiritual being than Mademoiselle, the confines of whose sway were my animal existence.
A spark of the divine fire of love had fallen from Beatrice's eyes into my bosom and had there kindled a flame which permeated all the ramifications of my existence. One curious result was that I willingly submitted to corporal punishment from her as it appeared to bring my sensual organisation into subjection to my soul, which was hers, and consequently in some esoteric mode gave me the gratifying sense of being possessed by her, of being wrapt in her, of having the same springs of life, of drawing our existence from the same source; of having my mind, my feelings, and senses bounded by her own; of, in short, entire subordination to her.
Maud's limbs were beautiful, round, and plump, her skin was white and clear, and my happiness had been great. Why did I torment myself with the unseen and the mental, possessing so complete a sensual anodyne as I did. Maud was not complimented by my silence while my brain was occupied by these ideas, and giving me a jerk with her hand, repeated the question: what I thought Beatrice could know, as she had forbidden me to become a model?
'Oh, I suppose she did not wish you to see me naked! She did not wish you to study me anatomically.'
'What nonsense! We have all seen your anatomy, your bottom, and-and-that thing you put into-me. Don't you remember how often we have birched your bottom, and besides yesterday, when Elise had drawn your skin back, and you had to ask us one by one to set you right-what more is there to conceal?'
'I had petticoats and things on then-being completely naked before you would give you a more exact idea of me which, I suppose, Beatrice wished to keep for herself.'
'Greedy thing! Anyhow-oh, Julian, I have had such thorough possession of you-at that supreme moment not long ago, I seemed to be you; to know and control your vital centres, mental and physical.
You had no secrets then from me; the revelation you made of yourself was complete.'
'Yes, Maud, dear; and it ought to be incarnated and reproduced.'
'Oh, Julian, do you think I shall have-have a-a baby?'
'That abominable syringe may prevent it.'
'Oh, what a crime. And yet imagine me with a baby and unmarried. You would have to marry me, Julian!'
Now I must frankly confess that I could not marry them all. I did not wish to marry Maud.
However, maiden like, she saved me from the embarrassment the necessity of a reply would have occasioned. When she uttered these words she pressed herself amorously against me; she did not stop there.
She was lying on her left side, I, of course, my back being against hers, was on my right. She moved her right arm, which was strapped to my left, backwards across me with pretty hesitation, and soon grasped her friend Mons. Priapus and played with him.
'If-if you-married-me-' she ejaculated, 'how-how-I would make that fellow work.'
And her body was suffused with a warm glow.
I slipped my left arm through, between her and the floor, and returned the compliment to her womanhood.
I do not believe that equality of the sexes will ever be established until the seat of a woman's womanhood is transferred from between her legs to her head. A man exists for something else than for procreation. But it is the beginning and the end of a woman.
'Love,' says the poet, 'is woman's whole existence.' It is all that she seeks, whatever she may affect; and if you can tickle her clitoris, either with your fingers or by way of her imagination, she will obey you as exactly as a vessel with steerage obeys the helm.
It is all very fine, though, for me to boast, for I remember how I was made to obey, a few days later, when a female hand proved to be a very effectual rudder.
'Maud, dear, take care! If you excite me too much, whoever comes to fetch us will find out. I do not want any more whipping.'
'No, poor boy; you have had your share. How Elise smacked you in the workroom! I told you,' archly, 'you would soon find out you were powerless in the presence of petticoats. A lady's whip and birch can bite, cannot they? Never mind, Julian, we shall have more fun yet. Oh-oh-oh. Naughty boy,' she exclaimed, as I tickled her. 'Oh-oh-oh-oh, do stop. I do not wish to be whipped again either, I can tell you.'
'What a nuisance these straps are. They must be making you quite sore, Maud; they hurt me very much. I wonder whatever Mademoiselle will do.'
'Oh,' replied Maud, 'she cannot do much; but she will, no doubt, make us both feel, and excruciatingly too.'
'The mixture of pain and pleasure is odd. In fact, some pain is pleasure.'
'Oh, Julian, I wish you would tell me how you felt when Mademoiselle first birched you. How dreadful it must have been for you, a big boy, to have had your trousers taken off before us girls and your bare bottom birched by your governess in her bedroom.'
'The sting soon drove all ideas of the kind out of my mind. It is all pleasure and no pain,' said I, anxious to turn the subject; for I knew that if Mademoiselle found I tattled, I should lose all chance of sugar-plums from her, 'to be here fixed to a beautiful big girl'-putting my finger into her-'quite naked.'
My old trick of analysing, into which I hereupon again fell, then kept me quiet.
It will be remembered, perhaps, with surprise, that I had not seen any female quite naked until Elise, having syringed Maud, very violently stripped her with Mademoiselle's superintending assistance, and laid her, as I had myself been laid across the bed, to be flogged. I had been in Mademoiselle's bed between her legs, I had also been between them underneath her petticoats. I had been made rudely acquainted with the maid's bottoms, but had only seen pieces of nakedness-breasts-legs-thighs-at one time. The statues in Mademoiselle's boudoir were my nearest approach to knowledge of the divine feminine form in a condition of absolute nudity. I now called to mind their exquisite shapes, their full bosoms, their admirably rounded backs, their thighs under which I longed to be crushed. When Maud had been stripped before me, my own sufferings from the cruel whip were much too severe to permit me to dwell upon the spectacle. But now I was back to back with her absolutely naked. It was the fact that she was a girl, that she was feminine and I male, which gave such piquancy. But she had possessed me while she had on her petticoats, and they certainly emphasized the difference of sex. I distinctly recollect that when she was undressed a vague sense of disappointment stole over me to find that after all she had a body and two legs like myself.
Wherein does the charm, the esoteric feminine magnetism, lie? In petticoats? Verily petticoats, drawers, corsets, long silk stockings, have a powerful and mysterious influence.
Maud, naked, did not possess the same power over me as Maud in her petticoats. When I lay extended in an
