ter the first ecstacy, our eyes and lips unclosed together, and a
little apart from each other we take delight in seeing the mutual
satisfaction beaming on our features.

Our desires revive; she casts a look upon my state of innocence entirely
exposed to her sight. She seems vexed at my want of excitement, and,
throwing off everything which makes the heat unpleasant and interferes
with our pleasure, she bounds upon me. It is more than amorous fury, it
is desperate lust. I share her frenzy, I hug her with a sort of delirium,
I enjoy a felicity which is on the point of carrying me to the regions of
bliss.... but, at the very moment of completing the offering, she fails
me, moves off, slips away, and comes back to work off my excitement with
a hand which strikes me as cold as ice.

"Ah, thou cruel, beloved woman! Thou art burning with the fire of love,
and thou deprivest thyself of the only remedy which could bring calm to
thy senses! Thy lovely hand is more humane than thou art, but thou has
not enjoyed the felicity that thy hand has given me. My hand must owe
nothing to thine. Come, darling light of my heart, come! Love doubles my
existence in the hope that I will die again, but only in that charming
retreat from which you have ejected me in the very moment of my greatest
enjoyment."

While I was speaking thus, her very soul was breathing forth the most
tender sighs of happiness, and as she pressed me tightly in her arms I
felt that she was weltering in an ocean of bliss.

Silence lasted rather a long time, but that unnatural felicity was
imperfect, and increased my excitement.

"How canst thou complain," she said tenderly, "when it is to that very
imperfection of our enjoyment that we are indebted for its continuance? I
loved thee a few minutes since, now I love thee a thousand times more,
and perhaps I should love thee less if thou hadst carried my enjoyment to
its highest limit."

"Oh! how much art thou mistaken, lovely one! How great is thy error! Thou
art feeding upon sophisms, and thou leavest reality aside; I mean nature
which alone can give real felicity. Desires constantly renewed and never
fully satisfied are more terrible than the torments of hell."

"But are not these desires happiness when they are always accompanied by
hope?"

"No, if that hope is always disappointed. It becomes hell itself, because
there is no hope, and hope must die when it is killed by constant
deception."

"Dearest, if hope d