as soon as I touched your sex, I knew you were no longer a virgin; but my love was strong enough to forgive you everything, if only you had trusted me enough to tell me the whole truth.
You never realized how infinitely I love you.'
'You call that love?' she cried. 'To try to shame me; oh!'
'More than love,' I went on. 'To know all and forgive everything and blame myself! I should not have left you a year alone without a word in your equivocal position and with your father and mother. I was to blame, bitterly, and I have taken all the blame to myself, but you should have cared enough to tell the truth, Laura!'
'But if I thought something bad about you,' she began, 'I couldn't bring it out and hurt you with it. I'd put it away back in my mind and forget it and say to myself, 'That's not Frank, not my love.' I'd deny it to myself and in a month or so, I shouldn't even think of it, much less speak about it.
'Now I'll tell you something, Sir, just to show you the difference of our spirits and what I have had to forgive. When we parted you told me you would let me hear in three months how things were going with you, but certainly within the year. Within the three months I saw you going about with other women, while I refused to go anywhere alone with the American my father had introduced to us, and who wanted me, I could see.
'One evening, six months after our parting, and you had sent me no word, he was taking us all to the Cafe Royale, that I had selected on your recommendation, to dinner, when I saw you coming down the upper flight of stairs with a pretty girl. I found out the stairs led to the private rooms. Ah, how it hurt me! I could scarcely eat, or speak, or even think. I was like one trodden on and numb with pain. While I had been denying ordinary courtesies, you were going with young girls to private rooms. Afterwards for days and days I raged when I thought of it, and then you blame me, and say you'll forgive me, if only I will tell all the truth, and you who began it. What have you to tell? And what have I to forgive?
'Time and again, I've thrust the truth away. I've denied it to myself, and as soon as you came to me I was so glad and proud, so heart-glad that I forgot all your wrongs and insults. I pushed them back in my mind and forgot them.
'They are not my Frank!' I used to say. 'He's wonderful, so strong and wise and he has real passion and affection too.' Oh!'
And the lovely eyes filled with tears: 'Men don't love as we women do!'
'Forgive me,' I cried, touched in spite of myself. 'Forgive me,' I repeated.
'You were mistaken about the private room, really you were. Till I saw the American caress your bare shoulder I never went to a private room with anyone; indeed, I'm sure I didn't, but I love you for your defence and your half-proud, half-gentle persuasiveness. We won't talk any more about our sins, but you need not be afraid that anything he or anyone else can say will have the smallest effect on me. I love you and I know you, your eyes and sweet soul, and the hard work you've done studying, and your noble loyalty to your mother, and all.'
'You darling, darling!' she exclaimed. 'Now I believe you love me really, for those are the sort of things that I love about you: your giving money to your sister and her husband, your careless generosity and your wonderful talk. But you're too suspicious, too doubting, you naughty, naughty dear!' And the lovely eyes gave themselves, smiling.
'It's your naughtiness saves you,' I responded, 'and your wonderful beauty of figure; your little breasts are tiny-perfect, taken with your strong hips and the long limbs and the exquisite triangle with the lips that are red, crimsonred as they should be, and not brown like most, and so sensitive, curling at the edges and pearling with desire.'
Suddenly she put her hand over my mouth. 'I won't listen,' she pouted, wrinkling up her nose-and she looked so adorable that I led her to the sofa and soon got busy kissing, kissing the glowing crimson lips that opened at once to me, and in a minute or two were pearly wet with the white milk of love and ready for my sex.
But in spite of the half-confess ion, the antagonism between us continued, though it was much less than it had been. I could not get her to give herself with passion, or to let herself go frankly to love's ultimate expression, even when I had reduced her to tears and sobbings of exhaustion. 'Please not, boy!
Please, no more,' was all I could get from her, so that often and often I merely had her and came to please myself and then lay there beside her talking, or threw down the sheets and made her lie on her face so that I could admire the droop of the loins and the strong curve of the bottom. Or else I would pose her sideways so as to bring out the great swell of the hip and the poses would usually end with my burying my head between her legs, trying with lips and tongue and finger and often again with my sex to bring her sensations to ecstasy and if possible to love-speech and love-thanks! Now and again I succeeded, for I had begun to study the tunes in the month when she was most easily excited. But how is it that so few women ever try to give their lover the utmost sum of pleasure?
One of the most difficult things to find out in the majority of women is the time when they are most easily excited and most apt to the sexual act. Some few are courageous enough to tell their lover when they really want him, but usually he has to find the time and season for himself. With rare courage Dr.
Mary Stopes in the book recently condemned in England out of insane, insular stupidity, has indicated two or three days in each monthly period when the woman is likely to be eager in response. Her experience is different from mine with Laura, chiefly I think because she does not bring the season of the year into the question. Yet again and again I have noticed that spring and autumn are the most propitious seasons, and the two best moments in the month I have found to be just before the period and just when the vitality in the woman's seed is departing, about the eighth or ninth day after the monthly flow has ceased. I may of course be mistaken in this. Pioneers seldom find the best road and the spiritual factors in every human being are infinitely more important than the merely animal.
I may give a proof of this. One day Laura asked me, 'Have you helped father recently?'
'What do you mean?' I asked.
'Well, he was hard up a little while ago and bothered mother, and then he got money and got afloat; and yesterday he wanted to know why we never had you now at the house at dinner or for the evening, and I just guessed. Was it you who helped him?' I nodded. 'And you never even told me!' she exclaimed. 'Sometimes I adore you. I've never known anyone so generous- and not to speak of it, even to me. You make me proud of you and your love,' and she put her hand on mine.
'I'm glad,' I said, 'but why don't you now and then try to give me pleasure in the act?'
'I do,' she said, blushing adorably, 'but I don't know how to. I've tried to squeeze you, but you ravish me and I can only let myself go and throb in unison. My feelings are overpowering; every fibre in me thrills to you, you great lover.'
'There,' I said; 'that pleases me as much as my gift pleased you.'
'Ah,' she sighed; 'it's the soul we are caught by, while you naughty men are caught by the body.'
'By the body's beauty,' I responded, laughing, 'and by the soul as well.'
In my bedroom at Kensington Gore I had a wonderful copy of the well known Titian in the Louvre of a girl lying on her side. Laura one day for fun stretched herself on the bed and took up the exact same pose. She was infinitely better made, slighter everywhere in the body and with more perfect hips and limbs.
When she got up and was seated on the bed she suddenly put her foot behind her head, discovering the loveliest curves.
To pay her for her exquisite posturing I tried to amuse her by telling her naughty stories I had chanced to hear. One, I remember, made her laugh heartily. It was the story of a solemn English lady engaging a maid. She had asked all sorts of questions and the maid had withstood the interrogatory with perfect propriety. At length the lady asked, 'Oh, Mary, have you been confirmed?' Mary hung her head for a moment, then replied in a low voice,
'Yes, Mum, once, but the baby didn't live!' The little play on words had a greater success than far finer stories. Women naturally like best what concerns them most intimately.
CHAPTER XIX
