For some minutes he remained as he was, then, slowly raising his head, he looked at me with the queerest expression and said, 'Devereaux, I can trust you You swear you won't tell a soul if I tell you what it is?'

'Of course,' I replied wondering what on earth it could be.

'Well,' said he speaking extremely slow, 'I love Fanny Selwyn!'

'Good God!' cried I, roaring with laughter, 'is that all? But man alive! if you are in love it should make you frisky and not as gloomy as a sick cat!'

'Ah! but she does not love me,' he groaned.

'How do you know?'

'Oh! I know it only too well!'

'But, my dear fellow, can you tell me why you know it so well? Perhaps I may be able to give you some comfort if you will treat me as your mental physician and tell me the truth and nothing but the truth.'

Lavie groaned, leant his elbows on the table, hid his face in his hands and at last he said, evidently with an effort. 'Last Sunday evening she would not walk with me to church -'

I roared with laughter! It was so superb! A young lady does not walk to church with a gentleman who admires her and thereby proves that she does not love him!

Well I heard the whole of his story, which was that up at Cherat he had been very much struck with Fanny Selwyn and in secret he had been fanning the spark of love within him which had at last burst into flame. He had indeed never shown Fanny any marked attention but as she never seemed to avoid him and always spoke kindly and politely to him he imagined she accepted his quiet way of showing his admiration and that in due course she would give him to understand that she quite understood and that she was quite ready to marry him. But on that unlucky Sunday evening he was sitting on his verandah without his coat on, expecting he would see Fanny and her sisters pass on their way to church and if he called out they would wait as they had done on previous occasions until he had got his coat on, for it was very hot and he did not wish to put that garment on a moment sooner than was absolutely necessary. But Oh! grief! dismay! horror! Fanny would not wait and not only did she not wait but when he hurried out after her he saw her and her sisters running – yes, actually running – away. It killed this poor heart! His hopes were violently dashed to the ground! There was nothing in life worth living for now it was plain that Fanny did not love him.

I listened with ever-increasing amazement. Hitherto I had looked upon Lavie as a particularly sensible fellow, but the story he told me and his reasoning were absolutely childish and proved him, when in love at all events, to be an egregious ass and fool. I, however, liked him a deal too much not to feel sorry for him and I set to work to comfort him and succeeded in doing so by telling him that, accepting his story as absolutely true, it only proved that Fanny Selwyn amused herself by giving him a chase after her. I admitted that she was a fine enough girl for any man to take some little trouble in trying to run after and I wondered that she had not been snapped up – young as she was, not quite seventeen – a year ago.

But do what I would I could not screw Lavie's courage up to going at once to see her (she lived only just across the road within seventy yards of my bungalow), declare himself and find out what her real feelings were towards him. He flunked it. I told him in vain that faint heart never yet won fair lady. All I could persuade him to do was to go and see Colonel and Mrs Selwyn and see whether they would countenance his suit. To this at last he assented and went off leaving me more than astonished at his pusillanimity. For Lavie was a man of strong passions, an ardent fucker; he had a reputation with Jumali and her companions of being one of the very best pokes in all Fackabad and I should have thought that where his prick led the heart his courage would have followed. For it was evident to me that he was much more cunt-struck with Fanny Selwyn than smitten with what we mean by the honourable term love.

Whilst I was still thinking over this astounding announcement of his and inwardly congratulating myself on my being free of any form of responsibility towards Fanny, he returned, his face wearing the appearance of satisfaction. He had seen the colonel and his wife and they had been very kind. They said they could not urge Fanny to marry him but they had no objection to his doing so himself. That their girls should choose for themselves and if Fanny chose to be his wife they would not say no. But when I asked him had he there and then asked to see Fanny he said he had not – another day would do! Gods alive! I did my best to make him go at once but it was of no use. He was satisfied to a certain degree and would live on what hopes he had extracted from the permission he had been granted. I said to myself that Fanny would not thank her papa and mama! Well! I knew Fanny better than he. None the less I hoped against hope that she would take him.

Why? Why? Ah! a smile comes; the more I looked back on the past, the more did I think it impossible that I could have even a chance in Fanny's heart. She had deliberately called me a fool. She had in a hundred little acid feminine ways shown me that she despised me and I believed that she would be more than delighted to say something sharply cutting if I ever showed that I sought her love once more. When a girl offers herself, take her, for she won't be likely to ask you again, my dear male friends! Moreover, although my faith in Lavie had been rudely shaken by his asinine ideas of conduct, I thought he would make Fanny a good husband. He was essentially a gentleman, he had a good profession at his back and I knew he would fuck her to her heart's content, and when a woman is well fucked she is always contented and happy.

I have known so many instances of girls marrying against their wills, going from the altar to the nuptial couch perfect victims, yet becoming quite happy women simply and solely because their husbands turned out to be first-class fuckers. This is absolute gospel and my gentle readers may believe it.

I was sitting reading Louie's delightful, loving, passionate letter for the fiftieth time, my prick standing deliciously all up my belly under the buttons of my trousers as it thought of the dear cunt it had so often fucked and spent in, when I was suddenly astonished at seeing Mrs Selwyn and Fanny walking into my room unannounced. It was very hot and I was surprised at seeing Mrs Selwyn, who was so delicate, expose herself too much to the sun.

'Oh Mrs Selwyn! What on earth has made you come over here in this blazing sun? If you wanted me why did you not send word for me? Here sit down under the punkah! Here is a chair! There now! Tell me what I can do for you and you know I will do it.'

Mrs Selwyn looked at Fanny and smiled. Fanny looked at me with the queerest expression of half-fun, half-earnestness in her glorious violet eyes. She looked extremely pretty. She had not lost any of the fresh colour she had brought down in her face from Cherat. Clad in a thin muslin dress, her bosom was that of a glorious nymph. Its two little mountains, evidently much grown since I had seen them bare and uncovered some months before, were swelling out in the most voluptuously tempting manner on either side. Her well-rounded and healthfully shaped thighs were equally well shown off by the soft folds of her dress and her lovely little feet and ankles, crossed in front of her, ended a fine pair of well developed legs which I did not wonder Lavie would like to open and take his pleasure between. Fanny seemed to me altogether more beautiful this day than I had ever seen her before. But I looked upon her as never to be mine and so schooled was I in this thought that, much as I admired her, my prick grew none the stiffer and was standing simply and solely for the sweet cunt between my Louie's thighs, thousands of miles away.