I'd give anything, everything to love, but to mere desire- nothing-'
'Desire,' I remarked, 'is the door to love and the guide; physical beauty can be seen and measured, so to speak, whereas affection and devotion need time to be appreciated. Do you know,' I added warningly, 'jealousy is no proof of affection; on the contrary, I think jealous people are usually hardhearted: pride is their master passion, not affection.'
'Oh; I'm proud,' she cried, 'I admit it, but I think if you cared for me and me alone, I would do anything for you whatever you wished.'
I turned the talk by admiring her arms and bust, for I didn't wish to change Flora; and, lovely though Adriana was, I resented her imperious-ness; but her body was too perfect and I ended by making her feel and enjoy her.
'Did I please you?' she asked afterwards.
'More than ever,' I said.
'You see,' she cried; 'may I come tomorrow?'
'Oh, you know,' I said, 'I have to work; I would like you to come, but not before Saturday.'
'Then you will have Flora on Wednesday,' she said pouting.
'No,' I replied, to get rid of her, 'I promise I'll have no one until you come again.'
She kissed me, and there the matter ended for the time. But she soon made herself impossible by her exactions.
It was the advent into our company of one Frenchman, whom I shall call by his Christian name, Jean, who brought us to an acquaintance with new sensualities. He chose again a girl, Rosa, and declared that by whipping her bottom he could bring her to a passion of desire and soon the whippings, just to redden the skin, became more or less general among us: from time to time we all tried it; and strange to say the girls were most partial to it- the sufferers, so to speak, though the suffering plainly was very slight and soon lost in pleasure. On more than one occasion the whippings became general, and nothing prettier could be imagined than three or four girls being excited in this way. Generally it was one of the girls who did the whipping; it was curious how much rougher they were than the men; it showed us all very plainly that women think less of small pains than men do.
Another thing Jean did was to send to Paris and get half a dozen instruments resembling the sex of men in stiff Indian rubber; and these, too, we found could be used to excite our beauties to a hitherto unknown extent.
We all agreed finally that the sensuality of women lasted much longer than that of men, and women needed much more exciting. But Jean's greatest achievement was altogether new to most of us. He heard the gardener one day bragging of his mistress because she had the smallest sex.
'Of course,' said Jean, 'you know that you can make any girl's sex as small as you like.'
We showed astonishment and he went on: 'There are three or four injections which will contract the sex as much as you please, contract it so that you cannot enter easily the sex of a woman who has had a child: it's ridiculous to talk of a small sex as a beauty when anyone can have it.'
In the next week or ten days we had all tried his injections of alum water and found that his remedy was in every case infallible; but still we preferred those who were naturally small.
Ernest told us that he had had a similar experience in the East, I think in Java, and I had to admit that I had learned about it in India.
Jean, too, would not be fettered for a moment to any girl, but every Wednesday and every Sunday chose a new partner; and he used to amuse us all infinitely with his stories of how he treated them and how he enjoyed them. One day when Jean had been bragging of his performances, one of his mistresses suddenly interrupted him by saying, 'The only way one can ever get you to go twice is by whipping you,' and we all laughed, for Jean was distinctly younger than any of us except George, and we hitherto had taken his bragging, more or less, to be the truth.
Looking back over that wonderful summer, I consider my most valuable experiences to be the stories the girls told of themselves: the sex experiences in girlhood of Flora and Adriana taught me a great deal, for they both were normal. I am sure Flora's confessions were perfectly truthful and, though Adriana concealed a good deal usually, she now and then revealed herself very completely. This is what Flora told me: but I'll keep these revelations for another chapter.
CHAPTER IX
'You ask me to strip my mind; well, I'll try,' Flora began, 'and if I omit anything, you must just question me, for I want to please you, you dear!
'Ever since I can remember, I have revelled in certain kinds of-may I call them, naked thoughts. Even as young as seven I must have been lewd — this is stripping myself with a vengeance. I remember I had measles at school, and a doctor whose pet I was attended me. He was very good-looking. I suppose he was a hero to me- anyway, I distinctly remember the sensation he caused me by undressing and touching me. That may be ordinary enough, but I used to dream about it, think about it, delight in it. Is that natural? I've never told any one-they wouldn't understand-so I don't know whether it is usual or not.
'And later at nine years of age or so, a girl much older than myself made me much worse. Of course, she used me to gratify her sensations, but it was very bad for me. She put my hand on her and told me to rub. I think I must have been really depraved, for later two other girls got very intimate with me, but this time I was the ring- leader. I can hardly say what we didn't do-you will understand. This at the age of nine and ten, and they say boys are more depraved than girls! I don't believe it. From that you can have some idea what I am like now.
'My dreams lead to sensations. I just revel in passions that have no outlet whatever, unless I satisfy them myself. And often I do that. That's one side of me.
'I wish to God those of my sex weren't such hypocrites. Even my best friend, with whom I discuss all sorts of things, chiefly men and women, often seems thoroughly disgusted and tells me seriously I'm getting very immoral. She was saying the other day that she had dreamt she was walking naked and alone down the main street, and she thought everyone had had that dream more or less frequently. I said I had never dreamt I was naked and alone anywhere! That it was wasting a splendid sensation. She was really annoyed.
'Then there were two other girls; they were about the same age as myself, thirteen and fourteen. They were sisters and very wild; I mean undisciplined. I didn't like them at all, they were too rude and bold and very mean. Still they served a purpose. They used to strip and put me in bed and one of them rubbed vaseline or some sort of grease between my legs, and the other looked on till her turn came. The sensation of being looked at was almost as good as the one of being rubbed. I must have been a cunning little devil, because I certainly wasn't able to analyze the why and the wherefore of it at all; I just knew I liked it.
'And then came older girls; when I was about fifteen, a girl took me up to her room and locked the door; it was a sort of wardrobe room-small and pitch dark. I was old enough to realize then just what I was doing. She put my hand on her sex and I touched her as well as I could. I know I liked doing it.
Naturally she was fully developed and somehow that was an added enjoyment for me. It did me harm in that I used to brood over it, gloat over it, enjoy my lewd thoughts-well, fifteen is too young for that, especially as I didn't need encouraging.'
'But why shouldn't you be encouraged?' I couldn't help asking.
'I was already too much inclined that way,' she replied.
'So much the better,' I went on; 'I can't understand the implied condemnation.'
'Nor can I,' she rejoined. 'It's merely habit, the customary way of thinking and speaking.
'You want to know everything: are girls' desires as vagrant as those of men?
Yes, and quite as strong, I think; when, as a young girl, a man attracted me, a complete stranger-or showed me he wanted me, in the tram or anywhere, I used to cross my legs and press my thighs together and squeeze my sex till I came just as if I had used my hand; often I was all wet. There, you have the truth!
'Why did I come here? Naturally, I hoped to win a first prize, but really that was not my chief motive. The
