"You see, D'Albert, I resemble the huntress, Diana, more than anything else on earth.—When I was very young, I assumed this masculine costume for reasons which it would be tedious and useless to tell you.—You alone have divined my sex—and if I have made conquests, they have been of women only, superfluous conquests by which I have more than once been embarrassed.—In a word, although it may seem absurd and incredible, I am a virgin—as spotless as the snow of the Himalayas, as the Moon before she had lain with Endymion, as Mary before she made the acquaintance of the heavenly dove, and I am serious like everybody who is about to do something that can never be undone.—I am about to undergo a metamorphosis, a transformation.—To change the name of maiden for the name of woman, to have not that to give to-morrow which I had yesterday; something that I do not know and am going to learn; an important leaf turned in the book of life.—That is why I am sad, my friend, and not because of anything for which you are to blame."
As she spoke, she put aside the young man's long hair with her two lovely hands, and pressed her softly clinging lips to his pale forehead.
D'Albert, deeply moved by the gentle, solemn tone in which she delivered her speech, took her hands and kissed all the fingers, one after another,—then gently broke the fastenings of her dress so that the corsage opened and the two white treasures appeared in all their splendor: upon that gleaming bosom, as pure as silver, bloomed the two loveliest roses in paradise. He softly pressed his mouth to the blushing points and so ran over the whole surface. Rosalind, with inexhaustible good nature, allowed him to do as he pleased, and tried to return his caresses as exactly as possible.
"You must find me very awkward and very cold, my poor D'Albert; but I hardly know what I am to do;—you will have much trouble to teach me, and really I am putting a very hard task upon you."
D'Albert made the simplest of all replies, he did not reply at all,—and embracing her with increased passion, he covered her bare shoulders and breast with kisses. The half-fainting girl's hair became unfastened, and her dress fell to her feet as if by enchantment. She stood like a white phantom with a simple chemise of the most transparent linen. The happy lover knelt and had soon tossed the two pretty little red-heeled shoes into opposite corners of the room;—the stockings with embroidered clocks followed them close.
The chemise, endowed with a happy spirit of emulation, did not lag behind the dress: first it slipped from the shoulders before she thought of preventing it; then, taking advantage of a moment when the arms were perpendicular, it escaped from them with much address and fell as far as the hips, whose waving contour half stopped it.—Thereupon Rosalind noticed the perfidy of her last garment and raised her knee a little to prevent it from falling altogether.—In that pose she was a perfect copy of the marble statues of goddesses, whose intelligent drapery, grieved to conceal so many charms, regretfully envelops the shapely thighs, and by well-planned treachery stops just below the place it is intended to hide.—But as the chemise was not of marble, and its folds did not sustain it, it continued its triumphal descent, fell upon the dress and lay in a circle at its mistress's feet like a great white greyhound.
Chapter XVI — The chemise, endowed with a happy spirit of emulation, did not lag behind the dress: first it slipped from the shoulders before she thought of preventing it; then, taking advantage of a moment when the arms were perpendicular, it escaped from them with much address and fell as far as the hips, whose waving contour half stopped it.