Lolita

The median age of pubescence for girls has been found to be thirteen years and nine months in New York and Chi cago. The age varies for individuals from ten, or earlier, to seventeen. Virginia was not quite fourteen when Harry Edgar possessed her. He gave her lessons in algebra. Jem'inagrine cela. They spent their honeymoon at Petersburg,Fla. 'Monsieur Poe-poe,' as that boy in one of Monsieur Humbert Humbert's classes in Paris called the poet-poet. Now this was something the intruder had not expected.The whole pill-spiel (a rather sordid affair, entre nous soit dit) had had for object a fastness of sleep that a whole regiment would not have disturbed, and here she was staring at me, and thickly calling me 'Barbara.' Barbara, wearing my pajamas which were much too tight for her, remained poised motionless over the little sleep-talker. Softly, with a hopeless sigh, Dolly turned away, resuming her initial position. For at least two minutes I waited and strained on the brink, like that tailor with his homemade parachute forty years ago when about to jump from the Eiffel Tower. Her faint breathing had the rhythm of sleep. Finally I heaved myself onto my narrow margin of bed, stealthily pulled at the odds and ends of sheets piled up to the south of my stone-cold heels - and Lolita lifted her head and gaped at me. To my surprise I found her dressea. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in slacks and T-shirt, and was looking at me as if she could not quite place me. The frank soft shape of her small breasts was brought out rather than blurred by the limpness of her thin shirt, and this frankness irritated me. She had not washed; yet her mouth was freshly though smudgily painted, and her broad teeth glistened like wine tinged ivory, or pinkish poker chips. 'And there she sat, hands clasped in her lap, and dreamily brimmed with a diabolical glow that had no relation to me whatever. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.Lo-lee-t