Fanny's faintness, however, only lasted a second. With that wonderful determination which I afterwards found to be so strong a feature of her character, she pulled herself together again and said it was nothing.

'Nothing!' exclaimed her mother. 'I'll tell you what it is, you are overdoing yourself. This march and the long rides are wearing you out, You must ride in the dhoolie like Amy and me.'

'Oh! Mother!' cried Fanny. 'I assure you it is really nothing! I really am as strong as a horse and quite fit to bear -' but here she paused as if seeking for a word.

'A husband and get children!' cried the impudent Mabel.

'Mabel!' cried Mrs Selwyn, 'how dare you! How dare you say such things and before Captain Devereaux, too! Go into the tent, miss, and don't presume to come out until I let you! I'll give you a whipping, miss! Go in I tell you!'

Mabel looked at me and as she turned to obey, laughing, acted as though she had a baby in her arms which she was giving suck to. Her mother did not see it but I did and was amused as well as a little, a very little, shocked, of course.

'It is all this horrible India!' cried Mrs Selwyn to me. 'Fanny, dear, is not that your papa coming back? Get up and see, that's a dear girl.'

'Yes,' continued Mrs Selwyn, 'it is wonderful how precocious children become in India, both in mind and body. Now look at that naughty Mabel. She is not much more than twelve years old and as you see I still keep her in short frocks to let her remember that she is not grown up yet. But, dear Captain Devereaux, I can tell you that Mabel is grown up and could marry tomorrow and get children as fast as could be. You would be surprised if you were to see her in her bath. Of course, you are a married man so I can speak to you about such things; if you were a bachelor I could not. So I can tell you that Mabel has breasts like a woman, thighs like a woman and hair – hem! ahem! what was I saying? Oh! yes, she is fully developed.

I could hardly help laughing at the slip she had so nearly made when she mentioned 'hair', but I refrained for the thought of hair around that pretty little cunt, which I had now both seen and felt, entered my mind and I sighed to think that probably my prick would never gain entrance there, nor indeed, to that darling one for which my whole body craved, that between lovely Fanny's thighs.

Well, Mrs Selwyn,' I said, 'the only thing for it is to do as I say. Try and not notice anything which is not too openly said and done in the way of sexual precociousness and try to lead the youthful mind into another channel. I promise you I will try and do my best to second you.'

'Ah! my dear, Captain Devereaux, how kind you are!' And the good lady let some tears run down her cheeks. Positively I felt an awful beast. For I had not at all intended to lead the girls themselves into any other channel than that which would the most speedily bring my prick slick into their charming cunts.

Oh! Lizzie Wilson! Lizzie Wilson! What a pity it was I ever had you. But for that I should have been overjoyed at my Louie's coming to me; but alas! Lizzie's delightful cunt had brought back all that old burning love of change which had made me a cunt-hunter before I was married.

I must leave my sympathising readers to realise the contending passions which tore me. There were now dancing before me two sweet, sweet cunts – Louie's and Fanny's; Mabel's did not count I had the most intense desire to taste Fanny's. I felt so sure it would be superb to fuck the girl on account of her passionate temperament. I had the liveliest recollection of my Louie's and the more I recalled it to mind the more I loved the thought of it and the stiffer it made my prick to stand.

I had fully expected on arrival at Fackabad to have found Louie there or a letter announcing her arrival at Bombay, whereas what I did find was a letter written in the greatest despondency saying that upon application to the agents of the P amp; O she was told that there would be no room for her until the third steamer after the one she had intended coming by. Sure that she was coming, I behaved accordingly and kept as much out of Fanny's way as I could without being downright rude. Even Mrs Selwyn complained of my making myself such a stranger. The colonel did not mind because Mrs Soubratie satisfied his every want regularly, I having taken a bungalow just at the back of the Selwyns so making it very handy for the poor colonel when he felt cunt-hungry, which was very often. But Fanny was awfully offended with me. There was no deceiving her. She knew quite well what it meant and that I was simply sacrificing her happiness to the exigencies of the case. Yet at times, when I was unavoidably thrown into her society more closely than at others, I could not so well preserve the gravity of my demeanour as to prevent her seeing that I admired her and what a real pleasure it was for me to be with her. Once indeed she said to me, 'Captain Devereaux, once upon a time I thought you the wisest man I ever knew.'

'And what do you think me now, Miss Selwyn?'

'A fool!' said she with emphasis. Jumping up, she walked away with her head in the air and in the most disdainful manner.

After that I thought that the sooner Louie came the better. If once a woman despises a man it is a poor chance he has of ever having her.

But it seemed to me that there would never be a chance of poor Louie's coming. By some extraordinary error on somebody's part she missed the steamer and then came a catastrophe which caused a silence of two mails and indeed nearly ended her life. I think what I felt most was Fanny Selwyn's apparent nonchalance when she heard that Louie's life was in great danger. At one time she would have found it difficult to avoid expressing openly her joy at such a catastrophe, for if Louie died she would (she was sure of it) marry me, but now she coldly hoped that poor Mrs Devereaux might recover. The accident which so nearly put an end to poor Louie very nearly put an end to my offspring also. Our little baby girl, playing at the top of the stairs, very nearly tumbled down them. Louie who was watching her sprang to help her and in doing so tripped and not only fell but precipitated herself and the baby down the whole flight. Fortunately the child was not seriously injured but poor Louie, being in the family way, was terribly hurt. The result was a premature confinement and the delivery of a dead boy and a hovering between life and death for some weeks. My anxiety was fearful. Poor Mrs Selwyn did all she could to comfort me. All the family, even Mabel (who had developed into a very naughty girl, forever talking double entente since I had tickled her cunnie at Nowshera), showed their sympathy with me, except Fanny, who openly said that I did not deserve a good wife and so God was taking mine from me. I can tell you that there was much more hate than love between us at that time. Fortunately it was, however, only skin deep. Fanny and I were both deceiving ourselves. She imagined that she detested me as much as she had loved me before and I tried to think that after all she was by no means as desirable as I had at first thought and that if I had the chance now I would not fuck her.

So days and days rolled by. There was an assumed truce between us and things might have gone on so until Fanny and I should have been separated in the natural course of events – but all was in the hands of Venus who smiled at our puny efforts to guide our own course. The time for the sacrifice had arrived; the veil of Fanny's maidenhead was doomed to destruction and in the shrine of her virgin cunt was to be set up that prick which had once been the god of her ardent devotion. Yes, Fanny Selwyn with joy opened her thighs to me and I will now tell you how it all came about.

Fackabad is a large station. A European and a native regiment are always quartered there with a battery of artillery and a squadron of native cavalry; there were plenty of civilians too so that we had some very good society in the place. In this way it was very different from Cherat where there were no civilians and only our regiment and the details of others. At Fackabad we had a judge, a deputy commissioner, a civil doctor, a civil engineer and a number of other civilians, besides a Roman Catholic priest, a Church of England padre and a Presbyterian minister. In addition to these male exhorters, who lived pure and simple and blameless lives, we had a number of very charming youthful ladies known as the Zenana Mission, one of the fair female missionaries being so beautifully furnished with charms both of face and person that she raised desire far more carnal than spiritual in the minds of those mundane inhabitants of the cantonment who like myself worshipped the Creator in his creatures.