'You made the wet come in me as well as yourself, my darling! my darling!' whispered Fanny.

'Did I? Well! my sweetest, next time such wet comes it must not be outside of us but inside you! Inside here! Do you understand?

For an answer Fanny kissed me, whilst she pressed the hand I had slipped between those thighs which if ever opened for a man would first be opened to admit me!

Whilst thus engaged in deliciously feeling one another and talking the language not the less eloquent because it was dumb, Mrs Selwyn came almost staggering into the room. She was evidently overcome with emotion and was far too excited herself to notice any appearance of heat in either Fanny or myself. She managed to reach the chair to drop into it but for a moment or two could not speak a word. Fanny and I, both in alarm, were at her side at once and waited for Mrs Selwyn to speak.

'Oh! Captain Devereaux!' she whispered and then paused for breath for she was panting with agitation. 'Go in! go in to that – that – madman and for goodness' sake, for God's sake, I implore you to calm him and tell him he must not persecute me in this manner. He talks of cutting his throat if I do not give him Fanny!'

'I will settle him, Mrs Selwyn,' said I as quietly as I could. 'I will go in now. Fanny, look after your mother, there's a good creature,' and so saying I made her eyes speak volumes. They said to me, 'Get rid of Lavie and then we will fuck, my Charlie!'

I went into the next room and there I found the miserable lover who had that very morning been talking whilst I had been acting! That very morning! Why it was not yet five minutes since I had had my prick not in Fanny's darling little cunt indeed but between her thighs and had spent a perfect flood and had shown her my prick and balls naked and had had her hand caressing my prick and herself calling me 'darling' and telling me I had made her spend as she had made me! I must say I felt a considerable amount of contempt for Lavie and wondered where all that good sense had gone for which I had once given him so much credit. Poor devil! The fact was he was quite out of his mind and his lunacy had taken the form of a passion for Fanny Selwyn, but no one knew or suspected the facts at that time. No wonder it was no use my speaking to him or advising him to desist from following Fanny for a while at least. He moaned and groaned and wept and behaved in the most extraordinary manner. At last I persuaded him to go home, promising I would see him again the next day, but when he had gone and when I had ascertained that Fanny and Mrs Selwyn had gone too, I put on my helmet and went myself to Dr Bridges our PMO and put the whole case to him and begged him to get Lavie removed to some other station. Bridges hemmed and hawed at first but at last he said that he had noticed that Lavie was not doing his work as well as he used to and he would see him and come to a conclusion in a day or two. I had to be content with that; it was something.

That afternoon I got a little note from Fanny saying that mama had desired her to write and ask me to dine with them unless I had a prior engagement. That was the propriety part but in the corner written very small and hurriedly was, 'Do come, my darling!' I sent reply that I should have much pleasure in accepting the invitation and I went.

As I suspected it was for the sake of a council of war that I was wanted and I told Colonel and Mrs Selwyn that I had seen old Bridges and both thought it was an excellent move. The poor colonel was especially anxious to get rid of Lavie, for that fellow used to come in by whichever door of my bungalow happened to suit him at any time of the day he wanted to see me, and as he used to come some nine or ten times a day the colonel was twice nearly caught in one of my spare rooms fucking Mrs Soubratie and for a week or more he had been entirely without his accustomed greens as he never knew when Lavie might perhaps find him partaking of them between Mrs Soubratie's brown thighs. The colonel also naturally wanted to put an end to the courtship, which was ridiculous and scandalous, so he determined to see Bridges himself and insist on Lavie's being sent away.

After dinner we all walked up and down the fine avenue in the cool evening air, under a sky lit up by a myriad of lovely stars. We talked of nothing but Lavie until Mrs Selwyn, getting tired, took the colonel in, leaving Fanny, Amy, Mabel and me walking together. Amy got rid of Mabel and I would have been as glad as Fanny if we could equally have got rid of Amy too. Our conversation naturally turned on love and matrimony and Amy said, 'Well! I only hope nobody will ever ask me to marry them. I will surely say no!'

'Why?' said I laughing.

'Oh! Fancy going to bed with a man! I should die of shame!'

'Your mother goes to bed every night with your father, Amy, and she does not die of shame.'

'Oh, that's different!'

'I don't see it.'

'Well! anyhow I should die of shame. Would not you, Fanny?'

Fanny hesitated. She had hold of my hand and gently squeezing it she said, 'I think that would depend upon whether I loved the man or not.'

'Exactly,' said I. 'I know my wife was rather ashamed the first night I came to sleep with her but long before morning she laughed at her foolish fears!'

'Oh! Do tell us all about it!' cried Amy, who seemed to have an eagerness to know how such a change could come over my wife in such a short time.

'Well!' I said, 'I will tell you willingly but mind you if I do I shall have to touch on subjects it is not usual to speak of to young virgins.'

'Never mind,' said Amy, 'it is dark and you will not be able to see our blushes.'

I was delighted at the prospect of being able to inflame still more if possible the already highly raised passions of Fanny, whose little hand trembled in mine, and I commenced, 'Well! I will not tell you all about the marriage ceremony because, I dare say, you are familiar with the open-daylight mysteries of marriage. It is of the secret side of matrimony, of the nuptial couch, of which I speak and I warn you once I begin I can't leave off. So if I say anything which sounds shocking you will have to hear it in silence. Do you care for me to go on?'

'Yes!' cried both girls and glancing at Amy I saw her press her hand for a moment between her thighs, for dark as it was it was not too dark for me to see that much. I was satisfied. It was evident that her little cunnie was tickling and I was determined that it should tickle her a good deal more before I was done. Not that I had any designs on Amy's cunt; I aimed at Fanny's rather.

'Well! my bride and I went to Brighton to spend the first night or so of our honeymoon. All the way in the train we had to appear calm, to speak to one another as naturally as could be, but I could see that Louie was not quite the same as she had been before that day. Had we been going to Brighton unmarried and not as we were, bride and bridegroom, I am sure she would have talked and laughed in a free and open manner whereas now some thought which I could easily guess at was oppressing her. That thought was of course that her whole life was going to change now that I had rights over her body which I had never had before and that surely in a very few hours' time I should be exercising them. She told me afterwards she had often longed for that time but now it had come she felt nervous.'

'No wonder,' said Amy again, pressing her cunnie with a trembling hand. I saw the movement quick as it was and made my prick more comfortable under the buttons of my trousers, an act which Fanny saw and which she responded to by a hard squeeze of my hand.

'Ah! no wonder! as you say Amy. And yet if our courtships were more natural and less conventional than they are, there would be none of this unnatural restraint. Why I loved my Louie as I had never loved a girl before. There was not a part of her I did not ardently desire to kiss, to devour! The very ground she stood on, the chairs she sat in, were all sacred to me! In fact, I loved her! I had fancied I loved others before but I now knew for the first time what love was. Ah! it is not all a matter of the heart alone but of the body also. I wonder if either of you two girls has any notion of what passion is? When all one's being is stirred up by the thought of the presence of the beloved, of the desired one! I suppose in fact I know that girls do experience much physical excitement when the passion comes on but in a man the change from quiescence to storm and fury is enormously marked. Yet in our cold way of making love, which is the conventional way, it would appear to be proper to forget all ideas of knowledge of difference of sex or even the meaning of marriage. A lover may speak of his mistress's beautiful face, her beautiful figure or her beautiful hips or her beautiful legs or thighs but never under any circumstances of that most exquisite and beautiful charm of charms which, made for him and for him alone, lies between those beautiful thighs.'