Lawn tennis, polo and cricket occupied the quiet ones and all were attractive pursuits on the beautiful evenings when the cool shade made exercise delightful and even necessary, for it can be very cool from the end of November to the beginning of March in the northern part of India; we soldiers had plenty of parades, with drills both morning and evening, except on Thursdays and Sundays, days always devoted to rest and ease in that country. If we had been idle at Cherat we made up for it now at Fackabad and there were not a few who welcomed the coming hot weather – hot winds, hot nights, hot days – for the sake of the nominal parades and the minimum amount of work, for man is by nature an idle animal when his pleasures are not concerned.

Hence my patient readers can readily understand that as the houses of the cantonment spread over a very considerable space and our work lay in very different directions, I really saw very little of my once constant companions. We saw one another at mess in the evenings and would say a few words to one another but I was never much addicted to staying longer than to smoke a cigarette after dinner; I was only too glad to go home and to take off my uniform and, clad in loose clothes, to sit in my long armchair and smoke and read at my ease rather than stay late after mess. Besides I was sore at heart. I was in great anxiety about poor Louie after her accident and I could not but recognise that so far as Fanny Selwyn was concerned the course of true love not only did not run at all smooth but that to all appearances the frail bark in which I had sailed down that current had got stranded if not altogether wrecked. I felt defeated and defeated through my own fears and I felt somewhat degraded in her eyes – in the eyes of a girl who had almost invited me to fuck her. I felt that she despised me and my want of that courage which is so valued by the girl full of desire and passion. But instead of trying to regain my lost footing in her esteem I had quite come to the conclusion that I must give up all idea of Fanny, that the enterprise I was once so naturally embarked upon had been providentially nipped in the bud and that to endeavour again to embark upon it would be to tempt providence to pour down the vials of its wrath upon my foolish head; but I was unhappy all the same; I did not like it.

Venus, behind her ambrosial clouds, naked, loving, beautiful, smiled as she read my heart.

I might have kept up my acquaintance more vigorously with the Selwyns but for Mabel. That little girl, ever since I had tickled her cunnie at Nowshera, evidently looked forward to being fucked by me very soon and she was more than daring whenever I visited her family. She plagued me beyond bearing. Her delight was, by word, look or gesture, to make my prick stand, no matter whether her mother was standing beside us, and my embarrassment was simply enormous. Pretending to consider herself a mere child, she would in spite of her mother's too feeble chidings seat herself on my lap and hiding her hand under her feel for and clutch my infernal fool of a prick, which would stand furiously for her though I wished it cut off at such moments. If I happened to be spending an evening at her father's house and to be engaged in a game of chess with one of the two girls, Mabel would find an opportunity to slip unnoticed under the table, crawl to my knees and with her nimble fingers unbutton my trousers and, putting in her little exciting hand, take possession of all she found there. I should have laughed at it only I was terrified lest this very forward play might be discovered. I had to sit tight up against the table and do my best to seem unconcerned whilst Mabel's moving hand was precious nearly making me spend! – a catastrophe I am thankful to say she never quite succeeded in bringing about. I took every chance to beg and implore her to be more careful of herself and me but her reply would be to toss up her short frocks and treat me to a complete exposure of her lovely thighs, downy motte and sweet young cunt, which she would insist on my feeling and which I was too weak to resist doing. It was the torture of Tantalus I was called upon to endure and the consequence was as much absence as I could keep from the colonel's house and the feeling on Fanny's side that my object was to avoid her. I could not tell Fanny the truth for she would have been madder than ever to hear that I had felt Mabel's cunt for the first time immediately after she had told me of the wonderful and delicious dream she had had of my fucking her at Nowshera.

The month of March had arrived; the sun was daily gaining power which before the end of the month would be tremendous. This is the season when fruit is most abundant in northern India and I daily feasted on figs, peaches, grapes and even strawberries. The letters I had lately received had been of a more cheerful character and you know what it is to be relieved of such killing anxieties.

One morning at the beginning of March I came home from parade and whilst I was drinking my tea and eating my chotah-hazry of fruit and bread and butter the postman came and handed me a letter addressed to me by the darling Louie herself. It brought a joy not to be expressed in words. Ah! but if every cloud has its silver lining so does every rose have its thorn. For though her doctor assured her that no permanent injury had been done to her he had told her that on no account must she go to a hot climate and on doubly no account was she to sleep with her husband if he came home for, though so sweetly, so gloriously, so entrancingly genial, fucking was the last thing she should do for at least two long years to come! Else he would not be responsible for her complete cure and immunity from danger. He even warned her that fucking might result, if too soon indulged in, in pain and anything but pleasure, and he said that as I was 'providentially' in India it was well to allow me to remain where I was out of the way of doing her any harm.

Poor Louie. She told me that the tears were rolling down her cheeks as she wrote the sentence of the banishment of my prick from her longing – really longing – cunt. 'It is only for a short season, though two years seems a long time to young people like us, my beloved darling husband Charlie! Still just fancy what grief and utter desolation would be ours if our coming together too soon resulted in what the doctor threatens – the complete death of all that lovely love which made our marriage-bed so supremely delightful to both of us! Oh! I love my Charlie and I desire the staff of his manhood – that splendid 'prick' as you have taught me to call it – too much, too well, to like to think of endangering all the happiness and delight I can give him and all the rapture and heaven he can give me. No! I will stay at home and be a nun and who can tell but that when the time comes I may not be, as it were, a new bride for my darling husband to enjoy, without that fearful shyness which to some degree marred the joy I experienced when he first entered the virgin territory of which he and he alone is Lord and Master!'

I was joyful. I was so full of the thought of my Louie that the thought never struck me that part of my joy might arise from the fact that she could no longer stand in my path towards a certain delightful little cunt. That cunt was between Fanny Selwyn's thighs. I say I did not think consciously of Fanny but as my story will now tell I had no Louie to raise a warning finger and say, 'Not into that cunt but into mine only must your prick glide, Charlie!'

I saw Lavie come down the verandah towards me.

'Ah! Lavie, good-morning! How are you old chap? Sit down!'

'No, thank you, Devereaux,' said he with a half-sigh.

'Why what is the matter with you, Lavie? You sigh like a calf kicked away by its mother. Has Jumali or any other frail one given you the clap?'