The Heart

p. 92

THE HEART

Panting, I took her hand and pressed it tightly beneath the humid skin of my left breast. My head tossed here and there and I moved my lips, but not a word escaped.

My maddened heart, sudden and hard, beat and beat upon my breast, as a captive satyr would beat about, tied in a goat-skin vessel. She said to me: "Your heart is troubling you. . ."

"Oh, Mnasidika!" I answered her, "a woman's heart is not seated there. This is but a little bird, a dove which stirs its feeble wings. The heart of a woman is more terrible.

"It burns like a myrtle-berry, with a bright red flame and beneath abundant foam. 'Tis there that I feel bitten by voracious Aphrodite."