Gynecocracy

A feeling of indignation and of intense repugnance to my situation and garb began to reassert itself and when I thought of Lord Alfred Ridlington I grew hot and trembled. I think I almost loathed myself and certainly endeavoured to recall a chapter in Genesis, purposing to examine it.

"What was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? Was I in any way related to it or connected with its doings? Had it anything to do with a man being dressed in a woman's clothes, with hermaphroditism?" I must confess I felt very uncomfortable and began to kick my petticoats impatiently.

Mademoiselle ate her bonbons, and sipped her tea, and looked from time to time curiously at me.

How did I like what wearing the petticoat exposed me to?

If I was really a girl, or partly a girl, or a girl behind, and a boy in front, I suppose it was all very well that I should wear a petticoat and be treated as a female.

"I do declare, Julia," said Mademoiselle, disturbing my reverie, her patience at length worn out, "I do declare that I do not know what has come over you. Instead of the excited condition, the rapture, the enthusiasm, the abandon of the bride, the recklessness of one whose dearest wishes have been crowned with complete satisfaction, I find you morose, listless, dreamy, pale one minute, rosy the next, silent, not a word will you speak, there you sit munching your toast, and now looking at me, now at your clothes, now at those statues, then at those cushions-what is the matter? Why are you so distrait? What do you want? Whom are you dreaming of? Perhaps," she continued maliciously, and again moving in a manner which plainly shew her to be under the influence of very pleasant feelings, "perhaps you will reply that as a woman I should know, that your attention, your thoughts, are all of them concentrated inwardly upon the material he has supplied you with to enable you to make and reproduce an exact image of himself. Is it so? I can excuse you, if my conjecture is correct, and, indeed, shall feel bound to apologise for attempting to disturb your cogitations. A maiden suddenly converted into a woman, suddenly confronted with the necessity of answering the requirements of love by producing a child, may well desire to be left alone in order to collect and direct her whole energies to the work."

This would have been all very well if what Lord Alfred had given me had not travelled the same road as what Elise and Mamma and Mademoiselle had given me. There was nothing to work upon. If there had been I should have received it before, not behind. I was quite sure no one could make a child behind; not even the Venus Callipyge herself.

But how in a single-minded manner to discuss my difficulties with Mademoiselle, who stated one thing and implied another, who was evidently insincere and probably laughing at me, was quite another question.

It was no use hoping to discuss it with Beatrice, for she was blind to all possibility of my being at all feminine. Of course Lord Alfred Ridlington would only think me insane if I hinted my doubts to him. And besides I was aghast with terror at the notion of suggesting to him the possibility of my imagining he had behaved to a male as he had behaved to me.

So that there was nothing for it but to apply to Mademoiselle, and, indeed, this was probably the reason she had me there with her. She wanted to possess both my confidence and myself; so that, in spite of myself, I might be her absolute slave, body and soul.

Another question was latent in my mind, and that was the extent to which Lord Alfred Ridlington was Mademoiselle's fellow-conspirator or tool. However, it was necessary to rouse myself, for Mademoiselle's patience was evidently wearing threadbare.

As I considered my own frame of mind and really morose disposition, I wondered at myself. The influences and experiences I was under, and had undergone, were indeed calculated to produce a condition very different from this taciturn, cross-grained mood.

Mademoiselle was as alluring, as delicious, as ever. My chagrin may have been caused by erotic exhaustion. I was sensible of a nervous or cerebral fatigue and needed repose.

"Come, come, Julia!" cried Mademoiselle, impatiently. "You have sulked long enough. Answer the question I asked you long ago. You are in petticoats. How do you like what they expose you to?"

"You mean being made love to and treated like a girl?"

"Yes," rejoined Mademoiselle with a too frank smile. It was a smile-I saw it plainly-of laughter, of amusement, of ridicule, not of sympathy or of tenderness. "Yes; of having your secret charms invaded by the rude hand and weapon of a man; of his making himself acquainted with your nakedness and acquainting you with his own emotions at the same time that he learns your own most secret feelings. Do you like being a girl?"

"No, I do not."

"And pray, why?"

"Because I feel I can be more."

"More?"