Needless to say she was to understand nothing of the sort, and a moment later she was perched upon my knee and having with deft penetrating fingers enough under her magic touch, began her narrative.

'I don't think there will be much to tell you until my school life at Paris begins. My father and mother both died when I was quite small; I had no brothers or sisters, and I don't believe I've got a relation in the world. You mustn't think I want to swagger, Jack, but I am rather rich. One of my two guardians died three years ago and the other is in India and doesn't care a scrap about me. Now and then, he writes and asks how I am getting on, and when he heard I was going to live with Eva (whom he knows quite well) he seemed perfectly satisfied. Two years ago he arranged for me to go to school in Paris.

'Now I must take great care not to shock you, but there's nothing for it but to tell you that about this time I began to have the most wonderful feelings all over me-a sort of desperate longing for something, I didn't know what-which used to become almost unbearable when I danced or played any game in which a boy or man was near me. At the Paris school was a very pretty girl, named Ylette de Vespertin, who, for some reason I never could understand, took a fancy to me. She was two years older than I, had several brothers and boy cousins at home, and being up to every sort of lark and mischief, was just the girl I wanted as confidante. Of course she had no difficulty in explaining the whole thing to me, and in the course of a day or two, I knew everything there was to know. On the third day of our talks Ylette slipped a note into my hand as I was going up to bed. Now, Jack, you must really go and look out of the window while I tell you what it said:

Cherie,

Si tu veux te faire sucer la langue, les seins et le con, viens dans mon lit toute nue ce soir. C'est moi qui te ferai voir les anges. Viens de suite a ton,