Gynecocracy

I felt the transport of my exquisite fetters, of my proximity to her. Her bare legs touched mine and held them; she was under me, the front of her nightdress was open, and my breast touched her bosom. Her breath entered my mouth and nostrils, her lips were against mine. She felt and judged the growth of my emotions and passions and her reciprocation of them, which I, on my side, was fully cognizant of, fanned them. Our transports acted and reacted upon each other. When I at last thought I was really about to expire in rapture, the spasm overtook me, and I sank on to her yielding form, a welcome and cherished burden. She allowed me to repose for some minutes in close communion with her. I had peeped into heaven. Would that I could have entered it! Would that she had consented to the incarnation of all she had affected me with and had caused me to express, by the throbs repeatedly ceasing and recommencing of that organ constituted for their communication. This expression she had refused to receive as a woman should receive it, an expression which should have resulted in a child born of her-what a child, what a love it would have been! Instead it had been wasted on her nightdress. What a crime! It was a grievous loss, a waste, a cheating of nature, for no moment can return, no opportunity once passed be seized again; never again might there be such a morning; or, if there were, it would be the second, not the first. It was the loss of the reproduction of myself upon my love, for she was entirely my love then, which deeply afflicted me; afflicted me much more than did the privation I knew I had suffered of the sensual happiness of which I had indeed had a partial enjoyment.

"Julian, how sad you look-how uncomplimentary."

"Oh, Mademoiselle, I would rather not do it at all than have to do it otherwise than in the proper way. If it is only a form you require me to go through, let me go through it. Let me marry you. That is not, cannot be the act of a priest, it must be the act of those who love. Who could be more married than we really are?"

"Oh, you ridiculous boy! Marriage, what foolery. I certainly shall not permit any such betise with me. Do you take me for a fool?"

"Then, Mademoiselle, it is a mere form, so let us be married without it."

"Indeed I certainly shall not so degrade myself. You should be grateful for what I allow you and not make me such a return. Come, I am not half satisfied. Come, you must be rested now."

"No, Mademoiselle," I said, "I do indeed love you. I do indeed wish to respond, I do not mean to be uncomplimentary or disagreeable, but I won't unless I may do it properly."

"Hoity-toity! What masterful airs! You will and you won't! Has not your discipline of yesterday taught you better? So I am to love you all in all or not at all, eh?"

"It is such waste!"

"Waste?"

"Yes; all the ideas with which you inspire me, all my conceptions of the loveliest forms suggested by your own beauty, all worked up into the most perfect expression, to be absolutely wasted on your nightdress. What can your nightdress do with it? It cannot incarnate the creature of my soul! You wish me to acquiesce in this-in your being cheated of conceiving, in my being cheated of-of-of conception by you!"

"Julian, on the subject of incarnation and conception you are mad-stark staring mad. It is a perfect mania with you. I expressly wish to avoid incarnation and conception. You selfish animal," she burst out. "In plain language you want me to have a baby!"

"Of course I do," I answered imperturbably, "of course I do; it is my right. You have given me the right; you have created, fostered, and inspired the idea; you have made me perform my part, and received it in the front of this," scornfully exclaimed I, holding up the front of her garment wet with my spermatozoa. "Of course I do," I indignantly continued. "Imagine, with my devotion to you and your kindness and goodness to me, which develop that devotion to its fullest extent-imagine Hortense, my own, what a love, what…"

"Julian, Julian," she cried, grief in her voice, "stop! It would be illegitimate."

"Illegitimate," I retorted. "What does that matter? To whom, except to hypocrites, is that of importance? Label it what you please, it would be our-our-child. Oh, my love!"

"Julian! Oh, my own, it breaks my heart. Some day, not today-not today-I cannot, I will not."

"Mademoiselle!"

"No, no, no! Come here. Lie down."

"I will not."

"You must; you shall!" and stretching out her arm to the table, she rang the hand bell, holding me very tightly all the time with her other arm across my back.

Elise entered almost before she ceased ringing. "Get a birch," said Mademoiselle. Then she added to me: "You must do what I tell you; you must not suggest such ideas; you must gratify me, obey me; you must, waste or no waste, please me, whether I incarnate and reproduce you or not."

What a thrill the words "reproduce you," from her mouth, caused me!