If she had any
cattleyas pinned to her bodice, he would say: "It is most unfortunate; the
cattleyas don't need tucking in this evening; they've not been disturbed
as they were the other night; I think, though, that this one isn't quite
straight. May I see if they have more scent than the others?" Or else, if
she had none: "Oh! no cattleyas this evening; then there's nothing for me
to arrange." So that for some time there was no change from the procedure
which he had followed on that first evening, when he had started by
touching her throat, with his fingers first and then with his lips, but
their caresses began invariably with this modest exploration. And long
afterwards, when the arrangement (or, rather, the ritual pretence of an
arrangement) of her cattleyas had quite fallen into desuetude, the
metaphor "Do a cattleya," transmuted into a simple verb which they would
employ without a thought of its original meaning when they wished to refer
to the act of physical possession (in which, paradoxically, the possessor
possesses nothing), survived to commemorate in their vocabulary the long
forgotten custom from which it sprang.
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