§ 79
Some husbands treat their wives with a satisfactory erotic technique from the first, and a few continue it through their entire married life. Others err from the first, through ignorance, and still others are backsliders in the pursuit of the erotic art; and true love departs from these.
There have been others who by accident have found after years of wedded life the key to marital happiness, or have been instructed by some erotologist—some physician who knows or some intimate friend.
The story of one husband who happened to discover for himself a secret that had escaped him for years is here given:
It was in the twentieth year of their marriage. Their son was eighteen and their daughter sixteen. Another daughter was not yet born.
They were off for a week in the month of August in the Adirondacks. All the morning they had tramped over the hills until they came to a lake, solitary, shut in by forests, a mountain overtowering the side opposite them—reflected green and blue in the waters that met their eyes as they approached a beach of fine white sand.
Sitting awhile they rejoiced in having found so fine a place to eat their lunch. They were miles from any human habitation. A heron floated majestically through the air. A kingfisher hurried noisily athwart their view. A fish jumped out of the water a dozen rods away and made a circle of waves which slowly enlarged until it became lost to sight.
Instinctively they both threw off their clothes and stepped down to the water’s edge hand in hand.
“I’ll beat you in!”
“Let’s swim to that little island.”
In they splashed and swam the first few yards under water, he leading the way, she following, but his eyes closely watching for any indication on her part of fatigue.
“Stay near me, Matey, there’s nothing but water where I am.”
“All right, Naiade, put your hand on my shoulder and rest awhile. We’re almost there!”
He felt her warm hand on his shoulder and her thumb on the back of his neck, and the warmth of the sun on his rapidly drying hair—there in the pure water almost arrived at the wooded islet. He felt the impact of the water on his flank stirred by the leisurely motions of her other hand and arm as she made as if to help him tow her to shore.
They climbed up and sat on a mossy bank out of sight of every living thing, looking from a shady spot at the lake shimmering in the sunlight.
“Our lunch is over there. We should have brought it with us. Nevertheless I’ll feed upon thy lips, Corinna.
“What an experience this is! I never had a swim like this before. A perfect day and a perfect place. Isolation complete. Thou beside me singing in the wilderness, but this is a very Eden and we are undisputed owners of it for this hour. I’m rich in time. I’d just as soon stay here till sunset. An absolutely perfect place to rest and play. I feel as if I could do anything—omnipotent as the gods of old, dependent on nothing. It thrills me to think of myself—just me—and you—just you—the only humans in all the world we see. If I were a magician I’d turn this moss into a magic carpet and we’d fly through space.”
“Oh, Matey dear, I feel as if I were flying! Tell me more like that. Continue the story. Tell it softly close in my ear.”
“Up, out from this islet we are flying, without deafening roar of airplane engine, but just soaring, soaring, wheeling in the air like eagles, you and I together. Far subtler motion than the intermittent strokes with which we paddled to that green islet now so far below us. Blue sky all about and sunshine warm upon my shoulders and your breasts. See down below us now a cloud. See our silhouette dotting the grey mist of it. And look, dearest! That rainbow of which our shadow is the centre. It makes a complete circle. Did you ever seen the whole circle of iridescence like that? You never could on earth. Look again, for soon we shall pass that cloud. A perfect circle of perfect rainbow colours—symbol of infinite beauty.”
“Stop, Matey, this flight of yours is too thrilling. Take me down to earth.”
“Matey, dear, in all our twenty years of love, I never knew you till this day. Why did you not teach me about you before this?”
They were now slowly swimming through the placid waters of the lake toward the beach of white sand whence they had adventurously departed two hours before. The sun warmed their heads and the cool waters of the lake caressed their glowing bodies.
They stepped upon the sandy beach again.
They devoured their lunch with eagerness.
They now, while eating, having dried in the sun, by force of habit put on their conventional incumbrances of sex-differentiating toggery, took up their staffs and turned their backs upon the lake with its silvery waves and white sandy beach and slowly wended their way hand in hand through the forest, to the road leading to the inn.
As they walked along the mountain road slipping on stones and gravel each saw in the other’s eyes a new flame of love never lighted there before.
“I wonder, Matey, what it was that made this day’s adventure the grand adventure of my life? I never saw you look so fine before. I never felt closer to you than I do this minute. Why have you never before told me a story like that, that fired my imagination as yours seemed to be?”
“I suppose I never felt fired just that way myself. Ideas occurred to me I’d never had before. Besides, I’ve done a pile of thinking lately—and reading, too. I think I’ve succeeded in piecing out a pretty good fairy tale about us. It makes me much more interested in your view of the world than ever I was before. But I can tell you other stories now. I think I’ve learned how to fire your imagination.”
“You have, indeed! I’m eager for the next. When will it be?”
“Almost any time we have an hour or two alone. We need time to get up steam, so to speak. We don’t need to swim in a mountain lake every time either. I think you got your particular thrill because you had me and my mind absolutely all to yourself.”
“Can I ever get that again?”
“Surely, dear heart, for when I saw for the first time that look in your eyes, which was not joy alone but pure fire, I learned something about you I never knew before. I realized that you yourself are a far more complex and interesting personality with infinitely more potentialities than ever I had dreamed of. Do you think now I would ever stop telling you stories like that?”
“I don’t remember a word of it except the perfect rainbow circle. The rest was silence. But it had somehow a world of meaning for me. I know we swam. I know we couldn’t fly, but you made me think we did, which is quite as good for me.”