 |
"He was standing, pacing back
and forth. Suddenly he said to her that, for a start, he wanted her to
listen to him with her knees unclasped and her arms unfolded, for she
was sitting with her knees together and her arms folded around them
|
"
|
| "So she
lifted her nightgown and, on her knees,
or, rather, squatting on her heels in the manner of the Carmelites or
the
Japanese women, she waited. The only thing was, since her knees were
spread,
she could feel the light, sharp pricking of the white fur between her
half-open
thighs; he came back to it again: she was not opening her legs wide
enough. The
word "open" and the expression "opening her legs" were, on
her lover's lips, charged with such uneasiness and power that she could
never
hear them without experiencing a kind of internal prostration, a sacred
submission, as though a god, and not he, had spoken to her. So she
remained
motionless, and her hands were lying palm upward beside her knees,
between
which the material of her nightgown was spread, with the pleats
reforming" |
 |
|
|
"She filled
the basket from the woodpile in the
hallway closet, carried it back to the living-room fireplace, and
lighted the
fire. Thus she waited for him, curled up in a big easy chair, the tea
tray
beside her, waited for him to come home, but this time she waited, the
way he
had ordered her to, naked."
|
 |
 |
 |
"O's
hands, overturned in a gesture of utter
abandon and defeat, her palms upward, lay quietly on her black dress
that
spread like a corolla around her. Sir Stephen had come nearer, and when
at last
René let her go and she opened her eyes, it was the gray,
unflinching gaze of
the Englishman which she encountered
Completely
stunned and bewildered, as she still was,
and gasping with joy, she none the less was easily able to see that he
was
admiring her, and that he desired her. Who could have resisted her
moist,
half-open mouth, with its full lips, the white stalk of her arching
neck
against the black collar of her pageboy jacket, her eyes large and
clear, which
refused to be evasive?" |