streams or
stars, he said:

"At least you don't make one badger you! Its curious: there are women,
who, even if you don't ask them for anything, surrender themselves
completely, go just as far as it's possible to go, yet all the time they
won't let you see so much as a finger-breadth of skin."

"Why?" asked Felicie, playing with the airy threads of her hair.

Robert de Ligny had experience of women. Yet he did not realize what an
insidious question this was. He had received some training in moral
science, and in replying he derived inspiration from the professors
whose classes he had attended.

"It is doubtless a matter of training, religious principles, and an
innate feeling which survives even when----"

This was not at all what he ought to have replied, for Felicie,
shrugging her shoulders, and placing her hands upon her smoothly
polished hips, interrupted him sharply:

"Well, you are simple! It's because they've got bad figures! Training!
Religion! It makes me boil to hear such rubbish! Have I been brought up
any worse than other women? Have I less religion than they have? Tell
me, Robert, how many really well-made women have you ever seen? Just
reckon them up on your fingers. Yes, there are heaps of women who won't
show their shoulders or anything. Take Fagette; she won't let even women
see her undress; when she puts a clean chemise on she holds the old one
between her teeth. Sure enough, I should do the same if I were built as
she is!"

She relapsed into silence, and, with quiet arrogance, slowly ran the
palms of her hands over her sides and her loins, observing proudly:

"And the best of it is that there's not too much of me anywhere."

She was conscious of the charm imparted to her beauty by the graceful
slenderness of her outlines.

Now her head, thrown back on the pillow, was bathed in the masses of her
golden tresses, which lay streaming in all directions; her slender body,
slightly raised by a pillow slipped beneath her loins, lay motionless at
full length; one gleaming leg was extended along the edge of the bed,
ending in a sharply chiselled foot like the point of a sword. The light
from the great fire which had been lit in the fireplace gilded her
flesh, casting palpitating lights and shadows over her motionless body,
clothing it in mystery and splendour, while her outer clothing and her
underlinen, lying on the chairs and the carpet, waited, like a docile
flock.

She raised herself on her el