esert again, nor verify its reality too
strongly, I clung to him, I clasped him, as if to hinder him from
escaping me again: "Where have you been?... how could you... could you
leave me?... Say you are still mine... that you still love me... and
thus! thus!" (kissing him as if I would consolidated lips with him) "I
forgive you... forgive my hard fortune in favour of this restoration."

All these interjections breaking from me, in that wildness of expression
that justly passes for eloquence in love, drew from him all the returns
my fond heart could wish or require. Our caresses, our questions, our
answers, for some time observed no order; all crossing, or interrupting
one another in sweet confusion, whilst we exchanged hearts at our eyes,
and renewed the ratifications of a love unabated by time or absence:
not a breath, not a motion, not a gesture on either side, but what was
strongly impressed with it. Our hands, locked in each other, repeated
the most passionate squeezes, so that their fiery thrill went to the
heart again.

Thus absorbed, and concentered in this unutterable delight, I had not
attended to the sweet author of it being thoroughly wet, and in danger
of catching cold; when, in good time, the landlady, whom the appearance
of my equipage (which, bye the bye Charles knew nothing of) had gained
me an interest in, for me and mine interrupted us by bringing in a
decent shift of linen and clothes; which now, somewhat recovered into
a calmer composure by the coming in of a third person, I pressed him
to take the benefit of, with a tender con-cern and anxiety that made me
tremble for his health.

The landlady leaving us again, he proceeded to shift; in the act of
which, though he proceeded with all that modesty which became these
first solemner instants of our re-meeting, after so long an absence,
I could not refrain certain snatches of my eyes, lured by the dazzling
discoveries of his naked skin, that escaped him as he changed his linen,
and which I could not observe the unfaded life and complexion of without
emotions of tenderness and joy, that had himself too purely for their
object, to partake of a loose or mis-timed desire.

He was soon dressed in these temporary clothes, which neither fitted
him, nor became the light my passion placed him in, to me at least; yet,
as they were on him, they looked extremely well, in virtue of that magic
charm which love put into every thing that he-touched, or had relation
t