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 elbow, resting her cheek in her hand.
"You are the first, really you are, I am not lying: the others don't exist."
He felt no jealousy in respect of the past; he had no fear of comparisons. He questioned her:
"To begin with, there were only two: my professor, and he of course doesn't count, and there was the man I told you about, a solid sort of a person, whom my mother saddled me with."
"Chevalier? He? Good gracious, no! You wouldn't have had me look at him!"
"And the solid sort of person found by your mother, he, too, does not count any more?"
"I assure you that, with you, I am another woman. It's the solemn truth that you are the first to possess me. It's queer, all the same. Directly I set eyes on you I wanted you. Quite suddenly I felt I must have you. I felt it somehow. What? I should find it very hard to say. Oh, I didn't stop to think. With your conventional, stiff, frigid manners, and your appearance, like a curly-haired little wolf, you pleased me, that was all! And now I could not do without you. No, indeed, I couldn't."
He assured her that on her surrender he had been deliciously surprised; he said all sorts of pretty, caressing things, all of which had been said before.
"You have really the teeth of a wolf. I think it was your teeth that made me want you the first day. Bite me!"