Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/44

28 simultaneously, and each took the pleasure with avidity.

Then Hamdonna seized the member in order to withdraw it, and slowly, slowly she made it come out, saying: "This is the deed of a vigorous man." Then she dried it and her own private parts with a silken kerchief and arose.

Bahloul also got up and prepared to depart, but she said, "And the robe?"

He answered, "Why, O mistress! You have been riding me, and still want a present?"

"But," said she, "did you not tell me that you could not mount me on account of the pains in your loins?"

"It matters but little," said Bahloul. "The first time it was your turn, the second will be mine, and the price for it will be the robe, and then I will go."

Hamdonna thought to herself, "As he began he may now go on; afterwards he will go away."

So she laid herself down, but Bahloul, "I shall not lie with you unless you undress entirely."

Then she undressed until she was quite naked, and Bahloul fell into an ecstasy in seeing the beauty and perfection of her form. He looked at her magnificent thighs and rebounding navel, at her belly vaulted like an arch, her plump breasts standing out like hyacinths. Her neck was like a gazelle's, the opening of her mouth like a ring, her lips fresh and red like a gory sabre. Her teeth might have been taken for pearls and her cheeks for roses. Her eyes were black and well slit, and her eyebrows of ebony resembled the rounded flourish of the noun traced by