— 80 —
pheus, half-nude, on a broad oriental divan; she was the idyllic realisation of my most precious dreams.
Her pretty head was lying half resting on one rounded arm, her profile rejoiced my sight, for it was pure and classical like one of Raphael's paintings: her body possessed the purest and most exquisite of outlines.
It was indeed the highest form of voluptuous pleasure to think that these charms were all mine, and it was almost a pity to reflect that after having been virgin for fifteen summers, they had been despoiled in a single night.
Her freshness, her grace, her youth, had all been plunged by the orgy into the filth and the mud of a soulless existence.
This soul of hers, so naïve and tender, this soul that had up to the present been watched over by angels, was to be henceforth the sport of the demons of impurity; no more illusions, no more dreams, no first love, no more sweet surprises: all the poetic dawn of a young girl's life for ever ruined…
The poor child awoke at last, almost smiling. She thought she was going to find her usual awakening, her innocent thoughts,
