“It is no easy matter.”

“Oh no, you are so clever!”

“Well, virginity is the physical and moral state of a girl who, like you, has not had a lover.”

“But what is having a lover?”

“It is doing with a man certain things by which children are begotten and brought into the world.”

“Did we not do these things?”

“No!”

“Then you are not my lover?”

“I am only as yet your sweetheart.”

“When will you be my lover?”

“In as long a time as possible.”

“I suppose it is because you would dislike it?”

“Not at all, just the reverse. It is the thing that I should like above all things in the world.”

“Oh dear! how tiresome! I no longer understand you.”

“To be the lover of a woman, pretty little Violette, is to be, in the alphabet of love's pleasures, at the letter Z of the ordinary alphabet. There are twenty-four letters to learn before you come to the end of that series whose first letter, the letter A, is a kiss on the hand.”

I took her little hand and kissed it.

“And what you did to me this morning-what letter was it?”

I was fain to confess that it stood very close to letter Z, and that I had omitted many vowels and consonants to get to that stage.

“You are chaffing me!”

“No, indeed I am not, sweet darling. I should like to make this alphabet last as long as possible-this charming alphabet of love, of which each letter is a caress and each caress is bliss. I should wish to take off little by little that robe of innocence, just as I shall pluck one by one all the different articles of your apparel from your person.

“If you were dressed, each portion that I should take off would disclose something new to me-something unknown, something charming; the neck, the shoulder, the bosom, and, by degrees, all the rest. Like a brute, I divested you of all in a moment. You did not know the value of all that you gave away.”