Page:The Way of a Virgin.djvu/69

Rh leisure, and the reader will scarce need my word to affirm that I made the best of my opportunity. The pretty niece (Hedvige) declared that I was too curious, but Helène let me have my way with an air so tender and so languid that I was hard pressed not to push the matter further. In the end, having again put on their shoes and stockings, I told them that I was enchanted to have viewed the secret charms of the two most lovely ladies in Geneva.

"What effect hath it on thee?" asked Hedvige of me.

"I dare not tell ye to look, but feel, both of ye."

"Bathe thou thyself also."

"Impossible. The business is too long for a man."

"But we have yet two full hours to remain here without fear of interruption from anyone."

This response caused me to see the happiness that awaited me; but I did not think fit to expose myself to an illness by entering the water in the state in which I was. Seeing a summer-house not far off and assured that M. Torchin would have left it open, I took my two beauties by the arm and led them hither, not letting them guess, however, my intentions.

The summer-house was full of vases of pot pourri, pretty engravings, and so forth; but what I valued most was a large and lovely divan, fit for repose and for pleasure. There, seated 'twixt these two beauties and lavishing caresses upon them, I said that I desired to show them that which they had never seen, at the same time exposing to their gaze the principal agent of humanity. They raised