exceedingly intelligent people.
When I knew Athens thoroughly and could speak modern Greek fluently I went with some friends, a German student and an Italian, on foot through Greece. We went to Thebes and Delphi and climbed Parnassus, and finally I went on by myself to Janina; and then returning visited Corinth, Sparta and Mycenae, where I was lucky enough to be among the first to see the astounding head of the Hermes of Praxiteles, surely the most beautiful face in plastic art, for no Venus, whether of Melos or Cnidos, possesses his superb intellectual appeal. It is curious that though love is the woman's province and love is the deepest emotion in life, yet the profoundest expressions, even of love, are not hers. And yet I cannot believe that she is man's inferior, and surely she is sufficiently articulate! It's a mystery for the future to solve, or some wiser man than I am.
CHAPTER VI
I had been in the Hotel d'Athenes a week or so when I noticed a pretty girl on the stairs: she charmed by eyes. A chambermaid told me she was Mme.
M- and had the next bedroom to mine. Then I discovered that her mother, a Mme. D-, had the big sitting- room on the first floor. I don't know how I made the mother's acquaintance, but she was kindly and easy of approach, and I found she had a son, Jacques D-, in the Corps des Pages, whom I came to know intimately in Paris some years later, as I shall relate in due course. The daughter and I soon became friends; she was a very pretty girl in the early twenties. The D-s were of pure Greek stock, but they came from Marseilles and spoke French as well as modern Greek. The girl had been married to a Scot a couple of years before I met her; he was now in Britain somewhere, she said. She would hardly speak of her marriage; it was the mother who told me it had been a tragic failure.
In the freedom from fixed hours of study, my long habit of virtue weighed on me and Mme. M- was extraordinarily good looking: slight and rather tall with a Greek face of the best type, crowned with a mass of black hair. I have never seen larger or more beautiful dark eyes, and her slight figure had a lissom grace that was intensely provocative. Her name was Eirene, or 'Peace,' and she soon allowed me to use it. In three days I told her I loved her, and indeed I was taken as by storm. We went out together for long walks: one day we visited the Acropolis and she was delighted to learn from me all about the 'Altar of the Gods.' Another day we went down into the Agora, or marketplace, and she taught me something of modern Greek life and customs. One day an old woman greeted us as lovers, and when Mme. M- shook her head and said 'ouk estiv' (it is not so), she shook her ringer and said, 'He's afire and you'll catch fire, too.'
At first Mme. M- would not yield to me at all, but after a month or so of assiduity and companionship, I was able to steal a kiss or an embrace and came slowly day by day, little by little, nearer to the goal. An accident helped me one day: shall I ever forget it? We had been all through the town together and only returned as the evening was drawing in. When we came to the first floor I opened the door of their sitting-room very quietly. As luck would have it, the screen before the door had been pushed aside and there on the sofa at the far side of the room I saw her mother in the arms of a Greek officer. I drew the door to slowly, so that the girl coming behind might see, and then closed it noiselessly.
As we turned off towards our bedrooms on the left, I saw that her face was glowing. At her door I stopped her. 'My kiss,' I said, and as in a dream she kissed me: l'heure du berger had struck.
'Won't you come to me tonight?' I whispered. 'That door leads into my room.' She looked at me with that inscrutable woman's glance, and for the first time her eyes gave themselves. That night I went to bed early and moved away the sofa, which on my side barred her door. I tried the lock but found it closed on her side, worse luck!
As I lay in bed that night about eleven o'clock, I heard and saw the handle of the door move. At once I blew out the light, but the blinds were not drawn and the room was alight with moonshine. 'May I come in?' she asked.
'May you?' I was out of bed in a jiffy and had taken her adorable soft round form in my arms. 'You darling sweet,' I cried, and lifted her into my bed. She had dropped her dressing-gown, had only a nightie on, and in one moment my hands were all over her lovely body. The next moment I was with her in bed and on her, but she moved aside and away from me. 'No, let's talk,' she said. I began kissing her, but acquiesced, 'Let's talk.' To my amazement, she began: 'Have you read Zola's latest book, Nana?'
'Yes,' I replied.
'Well,' she said, 'you know what the girl did to Nana?' 'Yes,' I replied, with sinking heart.
'Well,' she went on, 'why not do that to me? I'm desperately afraid of getting a child; you would be too in my place; why not love each other without fear?'
A moment's thought told me that all roads lead to Rome and so I assented and soon I slipped down between her legs. 'Tell me please how to give you most pleasure,' I said, and gently I opened the lips of her sex and put my lips on it and my tongue against her clitoris. There was nothing repulsive in it; it was another and more sensitive mouth. Hardly had I kissed it twice when she slid lower down in the bed with a sigh, whispering, 'That's it; that's heavenly!'
Thus encouraged I naturally continued: soon her little lump swelled out so that I could take it in my lips and each time I sucked it, her body moved convulsively, and soon she opened her legs further and drew them up to let me in to the uttermost. Now I varied the movement by tonguing the rest of her sex and thrusting my tongue into her as far as possible; her movements quickened and her breathing grew more and more spasmodic, and when I went back to the clitoris again and took it in my lips and sucked it while pushing my forefinger back and forth into her sex, her movements became wilder and she began suddenly to cry in French, 'Oh, c'est fou! Oh, c'est fou!
Oh! Oh!' And suddenly she lifted me up, took my head in both her hands, and crushed my mouth with hers, as if she wanted to hurt me.
The next moment my head was between her legs again and the game went on. Little by little I felt that my finger rubbing the top of her sex while I tongued her clitoris gave her the most pleasure, and after another ten minutes of this delightful practice she cried: 'Frank, Frank, stop! Kiss me! Stop and kiss me, I can't stand any more, I am rigid with passion and want to bite or pinch you.'
Naturally I did as I was told and her body melted itself against mine while our lips met. 'You dear,' she said, 'I love you so, and oh how wonderfully you kiss.'
'You've taught me,' I said. 'I'm your pupil.'
While we were together my sex was against hers and seeking an entry; each time it pushed in, she drew away; at length she said: 'I'd love to give myself to you, dear, but I'm frightened.'
'You need not be,' I assured her. 'If you let me enter, I'll withdraw before my seed comes and there'll be no danger.' But do what I would, say what I would, that first night she would not yield to me in the usual way.
I knew enough about women to know that the more I restrained myself and left her to take the initiative, the greater would be my reward. A few days later I took her up Mount Lycabettus and showed her 'all the kingdoms of the spirit,' as I used to call Athens and the surroundings. She wanted to know about ancient Greek literature. 'Was it better than modern French literature?'
'Yes and no; it was altogether different.'
She confessed she could not understand Homer, but when I recited choruses from the Oedipus Rex, she understood them; and the great oath in Demosthenes' speech, 'Not by those who first faced death at Marathon' — and the noble summing up brought tears to her eyes-'Now by your judgment you will either drive our accusers out over land and over sea, houseless and homeless, or you will give to us a sure release from all danger in the peace of the eternal silence.' On hearing this, she kissed me of her own accord.
As we were walking that afternoon down the long slope of Lycabettus, 'You don't want me any more?' she said, suddenly. 'Men are such selfish creatures; if you don't do all they want at once, they draw away.'
'You don't believe a word of that,' I interrupted. 'When have I drawn away?
I'm awaiting your good pleasure. I didn't want to bother you perpetually, that's all. If you could see me watching the handle of your door every night-'
