We were now alone; and on that idea a sudden fit of
trembling seiz'd me. I was so afraid, without a precise
notion of why, and what I had to fear, that I sat on the
settee, by the fire-side, motionless, and petrified, with-
out life or spirit, not knowing how to look or how to stir.
But long I was not suffered to remain in this state of
stupefaction: the monster squatted down by me on the settee,
and without farther ceremony or preamble, flings his arms
about my neck, and drawing me pretty forcibly towards him,
oblig'd me to receive, in spite of my struggles to disengage
from him, his pestilential kisses, which quite overcame me.
Finding me then next to senseless, and unresisting, he tears
off my neck handkerchief, and laid all open there to his
eyes and hands: still I endur'd all without flinching, till
embolden'd by my sufferance and silence, for I had not the
power to speak or cry out, he attempted to lay me down on
the settee, and I felt his hand on the lower part of my
naked thighs, which were cross'd, and which he endeavoured
to unlock . . . Oh then! I was roused out of my passive
endurance, and springing from him with an activity he was
not prepar'd for, threw myself at his feet, and begg'd him,
in the most moving tone, not to be rude, and that he would
not hurt me:--"Hurt you, my dear?" says the brute; "I intend
you no harm .
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