Page:Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, t. II.djvu/183

 But I know that voice,' I said to myself. 'Its sound is most familar to me. Only the blood which is reaching up to my head and tingling in my ears prevents me from understanding whose voice it is.'

"Whilst in my amazement I had lifted up my head, she had got up and turned round. Standing as she was now, and nearer the door, my eyes could not reach her face, still I could see her naked body—from the shoulders downwards. It was a marvellous figure, the finest one I had ever seen. A woman's torso in the height of its beauty.

"Her skin was of a dazzling whiteness, and could vie in smoothness as well as in pearly lustre with the satin of the gown she had cast off. Her breasts—perhaps a little too big to be æsthetically beautiful—seemed to belong to one of those voluptuous Venetian courtezans painted by Titian; they stood out plump and hard as if swollen with milk; the protruding nipples, like two dainty pink buds, were surrounded by a brownish halo which looked like the silky fringe of the passion flower.