Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/29

, her blood was replete with lechery.

The fact is that only the day before, the catamenial flux had ceased, and she felt like a convalescent arising from a bed of sickness, and feeling a new life flow within her veins.

Thus her monthly flux had left her body weak and languid, and not only that, but it had enkindled an ardent fire in her very womb, the flames of which mounting up to her brain awakened in her an almost irresistible craving for a strong man. It seemed as if nature's fragile flower, having lost all its own dew, was—notwithstanding its scented baths and ablutions—parched by an inward fire, and languished for that water which quenches all thirst, for that milk which flows from the deep fountain of man's virility. Every month, for a few days, that bloody fiend shattered her and laid her at the mercy of a man's lust, making her rave for those caresses for which she had been created. Possibly, had she been able to have her full of that unknown bliss once, she would not have cared for it any more, but abstinence rendered her almost hysteric.