Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/30

 Nature, now, had awakened in her that morbid tenderness, that eagerness for the caress of the other sex; so, as she approached the open casement and saw the youth so full of manly vigour, convulsed—as he was—by lust, and burning to quench the fire that was consuming him, she felt irresistibly drawn towards him; she was in fact like a withering plant, which—fading under the rays of a scorching sun—droops towards the earth as if to breathe the moist vapours that arise from the soil.

Now as she looked upon him, she underwent a strange sensation.

The face of the youth—she thought—was not unknown to her; she had felt its almost mystic fascination before?

But where and when?

Nay, more than that, she knew that body in all its nakedness. This thought brought the blood to her cheeks, for she had never seen a naked man. She pressed her hands against her temples and ransacked the farthermost recesses of her brain. Where had she known that man before?