So revived and refreshed was Edith now that she felt the hunger which had deserted her thus far on the trip. Her brother rang for the porter and ordered luncheon up from the buffet since the dining car was long ago closed and dropped from the train.
“Up you get, Snookums,” he said. “You shall eat at this small table.”
Even though she flushed, Edith did not feel it so very distressing now to slip from bed in her long but gauzy nighty under the eyes of her apparently calm and collected companion. She slipped her slender, aristocratic feet into furred slippers and cast a negligee about her hurriedly as she saw in the long mirror how her body gleamed through the thin nightgown.
It was after she had partaken with gusto of a surprisingly tasty luncheon gotten together by the porter that she and Herbert became high-spiritedly playful in a way reminiscent of their earlier childish frolics. They played a little game called “Sight Unseen,” in which one of them pressed the backward-extended fingers of the other against some object-coins, an umbrella, a kerchief, varied articles-which must be appraised and identified by the mere fingertips.
Mischievously, Edith doffed a slipper. She laid a soft and rosy heel against his fingertips, which, by the rules of the game, must not be moved to aid in identification. And when he guessed that it was her chin he felt she gurgled with triumphant laughter.
They kissed every little while in glee, a long-omitted childish habit of theirs. The warmth and fragrance and dusky charm of the girl began to have a rare but well-remembered effect upon Herbert’s senses. She had slipped off the silken negligee at his suggestion-for it was rather oppressively warm in the compartment despite the open window, and her pinky-white nakedness was ill concealed-not at all concealed, in fact, when she chanced to be between him and the light-reflecting mirror.
She was sitting now in a little chair, eyes front and both slim hands extended behind her, awaiting her next test of astuteness in divination. If she could have seen his face and the glow in his dark eyes as he bent above her now from the rear, Edith might well have started up in dismay instead of laughing merrily as she defied him to fool her again.
For the unfaithful nighty had fallen well away from her lovely bosom and the light so fell upon her now that the tenuous silk of her sole garment was merely a mist about her fine body. His fingers working nervously, Herbert was silent and staring:
“Old slow poke,” she called him lightly as he delayed to put her to the test. “Chocolate or gloves that I guess it right away this time.”
His features strained, his brow furrowed, the boy was silently fumbling about his person. His body throbbed with feverish excitement as he caught one of her hands and laid the fingertips on a smooth, warm, hard something. “Heavens, me just a moment”! she said bewildered. “I thought it was skin at first, but no, let me move my fingers just a fraction of an inch. It seems round, warm-the ball, maybe, of one of your hands? No? Don’t tell me-give me a chance. If only I could move my fingers I’m sure I could guess it easily.”
“Move them as you like, use both hands,” he said huskily.
He brought her other hand to join its mate. “Oh-o-o-oh-what-what!” stammered Edith.
Both her white hands were now exploring, curling, clasping, investigating. “How hard-and long-and-what is this-hanging?” breathed the girl.
One groping hand had touched the dangling sack of his testicles. And still-such was her entire ignorance of the male anatomy-she did not comprehend the shameful thing her brother’s lechery had led him to do. It was the hair which first enlightened her.
“Hair!” she gasped. “It’s part of you. Oh-oh, Herbert, Herbert-how could you-do such a thing to me!”
Her hands retreated to her scarlet face. Her almost nude body trembled visibly.
“It’s what makes me a man-“ he whispered in a rosy ear.
She was silent, shuddering, for a moment. And then: “I know-I knew-I guessed it!” she wailed softly. “What an unspeakable thing to make me do, Herbie!”
“Well, good heavens, you have the same right to know about men-about me-that I have to know about you!” he muttered. “And you didn’t know-no, you didn’t know, you’ve never seen one, have you, limp or stiff, as mine is now?”
“No, no, no!” she panted. “I haven’t and I have no right to!”
“Just take it, dear. You needn’t even look at it if it scares you. But learn, at least, what it is like.”
As he took her wrists lightly Edith’s hand fell from her reddened face. As in a stupor, with shamed and impassioned curiosity, she let all her fingers be drawn once more to her brother’s virile nakedness. “Oh-oh-h-heavens!” she whispered. “How smooth-and how hard and warm-and how terribly, terribly big! Does such a thing as that really have to go-inside a girl? It’s incredible-no, no,-I shall never marry!”
He chuckled almost savagely, wrought into foaming lust by his young sister’s timid but thorough investigations. “You will marry. You will adore a thing like that. By God, I have a notion of marrying you myself, of taking you, darling. Take off your nighty. You’re so wonderful, so lovely. How marvelously happy we could be,” he muttered. “Edith, let me hug you all naked for a minute!” “Oh, you frighten me so, Herbert!” cried the panting girl. “Now you’re the way you were those other times! I-I shouldn’t have touched you!”
She sprang up, facing him now, backing slowly against her bed in alarm, seeing all his nakedness with glazed eyes.
With a mighty effort he took himself in hand sufficiently to smile and dispel her fear of unspeakable disaster. “I was just teasing you,” he said. “I’ll be reasonable, Edith, and so must you be. Here-as long as you have touched, find out all about me.”
Slowly the apprehension in the dark eyes and reddened face of the seventeen-year-old died away. Reclining now on her bed once more, and mindless now of the betrayal of her person by the scant apparel she wore, she yielded ashamedly to the glowing temptation which his rigid virility proffered so seductively.
Handling and petting the stalwart, inflamed member in a way which almost banished his self-control once again, the maiden cooed over it and even laid her soft, burning cheek against it. A great and inexplicable desire came over her. “Don’t look for a moment, Herbie,” she begged. “I just want to see how it seems to-“
As he humored her, with eyes averted, he felt her lovely lips upon the shining knob of his sex in a kiss.
“I-I know it’s horrid of me” she breathed faintly, her face scarlet as he looked down upon her once more. “But I just felt I-I w-wanted to.”
“It’s not horrid,” he denied. “It’s wonderful of you-it’s glorious! You do love to play with it, don’t you, Edith, even if you are afraid of getting married?”
For answer another timid kiss was pressed upon his member, this time just below the knob, and the fascinated girl did not try to avoid his eyes. “Listen, dearest sister,” he whispered. “Just for this once-it can never happen again in our lives-let us lie in each other’s arms, naked. Just for an hour-for ten minutes, Edith,” he coaxed as she shrank from this further yielding.
He sensed the fear of the ultimate sacrifice, of the abnormal and irretrievable conjunction, which made the maiden shrink and falter in spite of her inflamed state. “No, no-not that!” he disclaimed. “I will do you no harm-on the contrary. But think, dearest girl, all our lives long hereafter we can carry in our minds images of each other as we really are, unclad and happy together. It will be a secret which nobody can ever pry from us-all our own.”
She cast a bare arm over her face in a trembling silence which could mean only assent to the temptation which overpowered her. But she shrank when he returned from his own adjoining room as naked as a young faun, his male organ erect and swaying.
“Off with the pretty nightie, Edith,” he said quaveringly. “We’re to be just ourselves, you know.”
Half-rising, she let him draw the garment over her head. “But it’s a fearful an unspeakable thing that we’re doing, Herbie!” she moaned softly. “And you won’t-you won’t-oh, you will restrain yourself-won’t you!”