Desire And Helen
by Frances Lengel
(GC-250)


Seeking the bizarre thrills to be found beyond the unknown, the lost 
authoress of this strange manuscript chased her elusive, sensual gods 
through the dark byways of the world. At the outset of every adventure is 
the invitation to pain, humiliation, the completely horrible-and to weird 
ecstasy. What drove her? Who was she? We read of her drug-filled, terrifying 
life ... and shudder. Nor can the mystery of her identity or whereabouts be 
solved by the French officer at Mascara, Algeria, who passes it on to us. 

A LETTER SENT BY MAJOR PIERRE JAVET TO HIS FRIEND, CAPTAIN JACQUES DECOEUR, 
OF THE FRENCH GARRISON AT MASCARA, ALGERIA. 

Ghardaia, 5 July 1945. 

Dear Jacques, Here is a pretty little thing indeed! You, who were always 
going to be a writer, what do you make of it? Officially, of course, no more 
than a routine enquiry. But for you! Could your imagination have created 
such a woman? What a superb creature she must have been! 

The facts are as follows: the original manuscript, of which I enclose a 
copy, was found on some stray Arab who was pulled in here for theft. We 
don't quite know what to make of it. The man says he found it. Of course, 
he's lying, but there isn't very much we can do. We have a good idea as to 
the identity of the sheikh mentioned in the manuscript. But again, we have 
to move cautiously. 

If anything breaks, I'll write you about it immediately. If the woman is 
ever found-well, we shall see what we shall see! 

A bientdt. 

Pierre. 

 CHAPTER ONE 

It is no longer daylight here where I am lying, alone, in this tent on a few 
sheepskins they provided for me. They have taken my own clothes and have 
given me those of an Arab woman. 

Outside, I can hear them speaking-but I cannot understand their language. 
They are watering their camels. Soon I suppose, someone will come in. But I 
am not really afraid. In the past I have always found that to be a woman is 
enough. I have only to wait. Some time we must reach a town where someone 
speaks English or French, and then I will be able to explain. They will have 
to give me up. But then, it may take a long time. 

How terrified I was when I saw the camels of Youssef s caravan move off in 
single file! And Youssef himself, the only living soul to whom I could 
speak, turning his eyes away as though I no longer existed! One day I shall 
make him pay for all that. Meanwhile I am going to go back to the beginning 
and write it all down-oh, I regret nothing! Not even this. Or what happened 
on the sand dunes a few hours ago. And Youssef, the poor fool, thought he 
was humiliating me! How like a man! I have met many men, and some of them 
have been fine strong beautiful men, but at bottom, I'm afraid, all men are 
fools. 

It seems a long time ago now since I bathed in the coral-spined water in the 
little cove below our village. That was where life began for me, I suppose. 
It was, anyway, almost the beginning.... 

How difficult it is to explain! The terrible mute hunger in our bodies! If I 
touch my thigh here in the near-darkness of the tent my whole body is again 
instinct with the driving urge that brought me here, and I cannot explain 
it. As always, it is stronger than fear. For me it has always been that way. 
It is as though my whole history were contained in the touch, asserted again 
in the pressure of fingers, all my life laid out with the smooth curves of 
my body, maturer now, but young still, and waiting silently, yes, waiting, 
on these hard sun baked sheepskins that they threw in after me. Oh, I could 
laugh! For I have only one feeling. I have only to touch the smooth slab of 
my thigh again and I feel triumphant! 

And it was the same then, I suppose, as it is now. It was lonely. I climbed 
down over the rocks to the little cove. 

In the northwest of Australia there is a long stretch of beach, wild and 
desolate, which gives on to the Coral Sea. This part of the Pacific is so 
called because of the vast pink stretches of coral reef which spread for 
hundreds of miles like pale wounds in the smooth turquoise shimmer of the 
sea. From the window of my room I could look out right across the sea shelf 
and the scores of coral were sometimes almost scarlet and sometimes, in the 
evening, almost black. Few boats came there except those of the fishermen of 
our own village, and most of them belonged to my father who owned four boats 
and employed ten men. 

The village itself was small and was situated high over the water and high 
over the little cove which, for a number of years, I had regarded almost as 
my private property. I had swum there since I was twelve years of age and 
had seldom been disturbed. No stranger ever came there, only sometimes a 
courting couple from the village but, as that sort of thing was severely 
looked upon, not often even the villagers appeared. 

By the time I was fifteen I had taken to going into the sea naked. That 
first time it was a sudden decision, no sooner thought than acted upon. The 
idea, for reasons which I was unable to analyze, seemed to explode through 
my entire body, becoming a sensation of weakness at my flanks and of 
excitement at my navel. I remember standing there at the edge of the water, 
my toes pressing into the sharp shingle, flexing the muscles of my calves 
and thighs, and looking for the first time downward at the slim yellowish 
twist of my body. There, through the delicate hollow of my half-formed 
breasts, I glimpsed the beginning of a chevron of silky hairs, damp to the 
touch from the sweat of my young body, from which my long slender legs 
seemed to radiate like spokes. I realized then that in some mysterious way 
this was my body's center, the axis of my desires, the mercurial fulcrum 
around which all my movements would henceforth pivot, and in whose ecstasy 
my female limbs, bared at that moment to the light sea wind, would find 
fulfillment. 

Then, with my eyes closed, the victim of my sudden obsession, I moved like a 
sleepwalker into the sea which rose upward over the finely haired skin of my 
legs until, with my knees submerged, the water became a circle of cool pain 
at each thigh. All the world was extinguished save for my own flesh and the 
softly pervasive flesh of the sea. 

Gradually, I opened my knees and felt the hot centre of myself pulled 
downward into the water as though by a gravitational pull, and as the lip of 
the water swung coolly between my buttocks and took my lower belly within 
itself, all the tension in my body was released and I sank ecstatically 
backward beneath the surface of the water. 

How long I remained there, bobbing like a cork beneath the surface, I don't 
know. Every muscle and sinew was relaxed, so that my splayed limbs and the 
white curve of my torso in sinking were abandoned like flotsam to the 
relentless will of the water. 

I count the sea my first love and, in a sense, the most immaculate, for 
there was no percussive sentiment between us to pollute the elemental 
tremors of our union; unlike the liaisons to which I later consented, the 
passion that fed it was an impersonal one. 

When I came out of the sea I found I was bleeding. I must have gashed myself 
during my plunge on a sharp splinter of coral, for there was a small cut 
just above the knee on the sleek concave surface of my inner thigh. By the 
time I had waded ashore the blood, in twin streams, had trickled down as far 
as my ankle. I sat down on the shingle, drew my knees apart with my hands, 
and allowed the sun to strike the wound on which the blood had already begun 
to congeal. 

My father, a narrowly religious man, forbade the hired hands to keep company 
with me. He viewed my approaching maturity with a mixture of fear and pride; 
fear, because among the menfolk in our village there was not one whom he 
would willingly have accepted as a son-in-law; pride, because, widower as he 
was, he found himself once again possessed of a desirable young woman who 
drew the glances of all the young men in the village. For my part, I 
despised the young men of the village, partly, I suppose, because of my 
father's constant admonitions, and partly because, having read widely from 
childhood of the world beyond the bleak sun struck desert of the interior of 
Australia, I despised the mute fatalism of men who would live and die in an 
isolated village like ours. The world of the villagers led to abrupt limits 
on all sides. Although I had little opportunity for comparison I knew 
intuitively that the men of our village had in some subtle way, doubtless 
because of the inflexible pressure of non-Conformist religion, allowed their 
manhood to go from them. They were vulgar creatures and, like most vulgar 
creatures, suspicious and afraid. 

This was probably the real reason why I avoided the beach where most of the 
village girls bathed. Although I would have been protected there by the 
strict conventions of the community, I was reluctant to exhibit the bold 
outline of my torso to the prurient eyes of the village men. I waited for 
the day when my father would be dead and I would be able to leave the 
village for the last time. 

Such were my thoughts when, on the eve of my eighteenth birthday, I climbed 
once again down over the rocks to the isolated little cove below the 
village. 

On the very next day I would be eighteen. I stood looking out far across the 
coral-studded sea for a long time, conscious again of the dull excitement at 
my roots which came to exist in me at the moment I decided to come there. 
For it was almost a ritual by this time. Without haste, I would remove my 
clothes until every shred of my being was exposed to the impersonal gaze of 
the sun and the sea. My lissome body, like a blade of grass in the light 
wind, exuded a pinprick sweat of excitement so that the slow surfaces of my 
belly and my flanks glistened like dull sequins in the sunlight. The hairs 
of my lower abdomen had spread by this time, and tenuous filament of sleek 
hairs connected the strong jut of my mound to the deeply indented whorl of 
my navel. My breasts, grown hard with desire, were dully painful in their 
arched-up position, and the lilac putty of my nipples was as heavy and 
ambiguous as mercury. 

As I came out of the sea, I moved my hands briskly against my limbs to 
remove the salt water which clung there. But I was unsatisfied. For the 
first time the sea had failed to bring relief to my limbs. In exasperation I 
threw myself down on the shingle and lay there on my front with my cheek 
pressed against the shells. I do not know what I expected other than to feel 
the thrust of the earth against me, perhaps nothing, for I was conscious 
only of the tension in my muscles and of the oblique smoldering dilatation 
at my roots. 

As I lay there, I caught sight of the log. It had been there for some days, 
washed in by the sea. It was half-rotten, fat, with a portion of the rough 
bark still intact. For a moment I looked only, and then, gradually, the 
knowledge of what I was about to do came over me like a sickness, the 
familiar weakness at my thighs, the hard little rotation of pleasure 
somewhere deep under my navel. 

A moment later I was standing, looking down upon it, and then, sinking to my 
knees, I brought my sex close to the rough bark. My whole body quivered and, 
with a sob, I collapsed on top of it, crushing it against my crotch by the 
pressure of my knees, and against my breasts with all the force of my arms. 
So violent was the convulsion of my body that the log rose under me and my 
body toppled sideways, bringing the waterlogged weight of the wood directly 
on top of me, rough and damp, and bruising the delicate sun-dusky skin of 
the front of my torso. Meanwhile, my back and buttocks were ground against 
the cutting shingles which crackled like china chips as my buttocks, driven 
by an irresistible arrow of lust, tightened spasmodically to bring my 
flailing legs round the log to grip it with the force of a vise against the 
hungry jaws of my sex. 

When the agitations of my body ceased, I lay quite still under the heavy 
hulk of the tree, and I opened my eyes and stared straight above me at the 
unchanging cobalt depth of sky that fell upward into infinity without cloud 
and without horizon. 

My body was painful from the superficial wounds which the weight and the 
rough texture of the tree trunk had inflicted upon me. I could feel the 
sting of broken skin at my knees, at the cleft in my thighs, and at my 
delicate breasts, but I could feel no hatred for the thing that had hurt me. 
Almost reluctantly, I moved from underneath it The whole front of my body 
was red from its abrasive contact, and, here and there, the trickles of 
blood mingled with the muddy liquid which had exuded from the bark and with 
the green smears that were evidence that the tree had once been rooted in a 
fertile soil. 

I returned to the sea to wash my wounds. The salt nipped them painfully and 
my clothes when I put them on chafed the tender skin. Soon, however, I was 
dressed and, without further thought for the pain, I turned to go home. 

At that moment, the sound of a man's laughter came to me. For a moment I 
froze with fear. What if someone should have witnessed my actions? But then 
I realized that the laughter came from the far side of a line of rocks more 
than twenty yards away and that the rocks cut me off completely from the 
sight of whoever was there. I might have gone straight home then had I not 
heard a woman's voice call out in fear: "No ... please ... I can't ... let 
me go!" 

Without further thought, I moved quickly toward the rocks. The panic in her 
voice excited me. Tired as my body was, it was aroused by the urgent secrecy 
in the woman's voice. My heart was beating fast as I scaled the rocks and 
brought my eyes to a level from which I could look down on them. 

I saw them at once. They were lying close under the shade of a strangely 
shaped rock which was suspended over them like a stalactite, the woman-I 
recognized her as one of the village girls who had been in my class at 
school-with her skirt disarranged above her knees, a sharp crescent of plump 
white flesh apparent between the top of her stocking and the hem of the 
displaced skirt, and her face red with the struggle against the man-I did 
not recognise him at first-who was straddled on top of her, his arms 
pinioning hers to the ground Occasionally, leaning the weight of his body on 
top of one of her arms, he released his grip and with one hand reached down 
and clawed at the swelling white orb of one buttock which stuck out from the 
frilly lace of her knickers like the gleaming knob of a boiled egg from a 
tattered eggshell. But every time he did so, the girl bucked violently 
underneath him and he was forced to bring his hand back to her wrist again 
to prevent her escape. Suddenly, during one of these maneuvers, the girl 
succeeded in toppling him over on to his side, and at once, before he had 
time to regain his balance, she had lifted a large pebble and struck him a 
glancing blow to his forehead. He uttered a cry of pain and brought his 
hands to his head while she, hesitating no longer, made good her escape. I 
watched her run quickly between the rocks and disappear from sight. 

The man sat up, still rubbing his head, and at last I was able to recognise 
him It was Tom Snaith, one of the young men of the village who had been to 
the war and who had returned when he was demobilized. As a matter-of-fact, 
he was employed by my father, who looked upon him as a blackguard and had 
threatened to fire him on more than one occasion. He was a dark-skinned 
young man of more than medium height, well-built, and he seldom appeared in 
public without a cigarette between his lips. Evidently he had decided not to 
give chase because now he lay back on the shingle and lit a cigarette. He 
held it in his right hand while his left, stretched out at ninety degrees to 
his body, lifted a heap of shingle and allowed it to trickle from his tilted 
palm back on to the ground. 

I hesitated. An idea was beginning to dawn upon me. Snaith had at least been 
in the outside world. With his help I might be able to escape sooner than I 
had expected. Was that all that decided me? I don't know. I had seen him 
lying heavily on top of my schoolmate and my body, in spite of its cuts, was 
already eager to succumb again to the primal turbulence which I had lately 
experienced. I suppose I wanted him as well. I wanted him immediately. His 
body hard as the tree had been, but warmer, and with more resilience. I bad 
never seen a naked man. 

Boldly, I climbed into view and walked toward where he was lying. He sat up 
quickly at my approach and I felt his eyes studying the nervous movement of 
my walk. When I was within speaking distance, he addressed me with a sneer. 

"I thought your father told you not to speak to strange men." he said. 

"It was you who spoke," I said. 

"So it was!" he replied. 

We looked at one another. And then I saw his eyes which, in his reclining 
position, were on a level with the hem of my skirt, move downward to my 
calves which were almost gold from the sun, and remain there for a moment 
before he threw a glance upward and said: "Why don't you sit down?" 

I did so without replying. 

Suddenly he knitted his brows. 

"How long have you been here?" he demanded. 

I looked at him. He was wearing his shirt open at the neck and the muscles 
of his chest were well-outlined beneath the dark hairs. 

"Tell me something first," I said. "Why did you come back here-to the 
village, I mean?" He threw his cigarette against the rock. "God knows!" he 
said. "Why don't you go away again?" He laughed bitterly. "It takes money," 
he said. "I could get money." 

"What do you mean?" 

I noticed that his eyes had once again fallen to the small triangle of cloth 
where my skirt rucked up against my mound. I raised one of my knees, 
casually, but so that the white skirt fell away, leaving the heavy surface 
of one thigh exposed. For a moment he stared at the bare flesh and then he 
looked quickly at me. 

"Together?" 

I nodded. "I can take the money from my father's safe," I said. "You mean 
it?" 

"I was watching when you tried to make love to Peggy," I said. 

He grinned. And then suddenly his face relaxed and, as though he were making 
a tentative bargain, he laid one of his brown hands on the dull opaque skin 
of my thigh. A quiver ran through me. I was now beyond my own decision. I 
slithered on the shingle into a position such that his hand came into 
contact with the moist and tremulous hairs of my sex. A moment later, his 
shadow blotted out the world for me, his lips, slightly open, came against 
my own, and his hand moved upward over the smooth skin of my belly, tracing 
a hundred contours of my thighs and buttocks, while I, losing the thread of 
all thought, arched my torso against him and waited for the inundation of 
relief. 

Beyond the edges of myself, I existed at my lips, at the twin excitements 
high and hard beneath my shift against him, at the tip of the finger which, 
with slight pressure, broke the frail webs of sweat that my body exuded in 
its delirium, and fiercely at my woman's pole to where eventually his 
fingers came, opening like scissors inside me, flooding my virgin body with 
pain and pleasure until suddenly, my skirt high above waist and the lower 
part of my torso abandoned to his will, his hard male core broke through 
between my cloven hair, and his angry movements culminated, his body rigid, 
in a javelin thrust that seemed to cleave me in half. The tension in my 
thighs relaxed. My outspread legs twitched nervously for a moment and then 
came to rest like long plant shoots on the shingle. The hard concentration 
that had existed in my flesh became liquid and the relief moved like a 
sensual lava through my limbs. 

Snaith had opened the front of my blouse and his firm lips sucked 
voraciously at my left teat. The pliant flesh shaped itself to the ring of 
his mouth and I breathed more heavily again as, with the slickness of a 
camera shutter, a small needle of desire pricked through my loins. I moved 
my fingers through his dark hair, at the same time pressing the back of his 
head so that his face was almost buried in the fleshy part of my breast. 
Then, with my other hand between our bodies, I pressed against the flatness 
of his belly, downward, mingling my fingers with the hairs of his crotch, 
until, his spirits reawakened by my caress, his buttocks tightened and his 
power moved again at the wet richness between my thighs. This time, one of 
his hands came round under my trembling buttocks and his middle fingers 
slipped surely into the downy rut which ran like a gully between them There, 
torso-thrust against torso-thrust and my plump golden thighs spreadeagled 
under the tufted white rectangle of his moving front, all the radiant juices 
of my young starved body mingled with the pearly male stream that marked the 
consummation of our union. 

A few moments later, he drew away from me. I rolled over, bringing my thighs 
which were hot and smeared with our love together tightly as though to 
contain the strange male emission that I knew then for the first time. He 
meanwhile had rearranged his dress and was seated crosslegged smoking a 
cigarette. His first words were: 

"Did you mean what you said?" 

I was lying on my front, perfectly composed, my skirts decent once again, 
leaning on my elbows. 

"We must go to Charleston," I said. "We can go south from there." 

"When?" 

"Tonight," I replied, "Before my father takes the money to the bank." 

"And we can be married in Charleston," he said, as though he were talking to 
himself. "He won't be able to do anything then." 

Fortunately, he could not see my face. What a fool he was! The thought of 
marriage had never crossed my mind. To be a house-slave as my mother was, to 
lose my freedom and adapt myself to his absurd male requirements! That was 
my first experience of this kind of idiot male presumption-why do they 
assume that because we have need of their bodies we will be willing to 
submit ourselves to the drab pattern of their everyday existence? If a man 
is poor and must work, what an overbearing impertinence to expect a 
beautiful woman to harness herself to his venal and constricted existence! 
Such men should be housed in a stable after their toil, and, if it is a 
woman's pleasure, they should be loaned to her for her occasional enjoyment. 
I had to suppress the impulse to laugh in Snaith's face. 

"We go tonight then," I said. "You must borrow a motorcycle and wait outside 
the house at midnight." 

He laughed. 

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll be there." 

 CHAPTER TWO 

I was not mistaken. I had just written those words that Snaith spoke to me 
when the heavy tent-flap moved. I crammed the paper out of sight under the 
sheepskins. The man stood in shadow looking down at me where I lay. 

For a few moments he said nothing and then, suddenly, he pointed his finger 
at himself and said something which I could not understand. Perhaps he was 
telling me his name. When I did not answer, he continued to gaze down at me. 

Under his impenetrable gaze, I felt something stir in me. It was as though 
some delicate plant inhabited my loins and was at that moment thrusting its 
roots and shoots into the darkest reaches of my flesh. I acted quickly, or 
rather, found myself acting quickly, for I did not consciously decide to 
play the part I did in the mute pantomime which followed. I was stripping 
myself of the robe they had given me. And then I was lying naked on my back 
in a prone position a few feet away from the man who looked down at me. My 
legs were heavy and apart. And then I was raising myself on my elbows, my 
body bristling in a tawny arch, my heels tight on the sand beyond the 
sheepskins, so that the hot halter of my loins rose like a snake about to 
strike at the man in the shadows. 

For a moment he hesitated, and then, falling on his knees, he thrust his 
bearded face voraciously against my sex. 

Once again I have experienced the terrible joy of annihilation, the 
deliverance of my whole being to the mystery of sensual union, and this time 
with a male whom I would not recognise in daylight. There is perfection in 
that. I want nothing more of him. I rejoice again in my separateness, in the 
vital isolation that makes it possible for a human being to collide, to 
coalesce, and for a short while to coexist with another. That is the essence 
of it. I am not like those weak women who want to be owned by a man, body 
and soul, and who, having submitted to such an indignity, seek in 
retaliation to hedge him in, to have him belong-what would I do with a man 
for twenty-four hours in a day, for seven days in a week, and for months, 
years? That is a kind of slow poison. My life is my own. That is a truism. 
But in saying it I assert the fact that I am not like those women, 
devitalized by convention, who will mutilate their own personalities because 
they will not accept the fact that all great lust is impersonal, a drive in 
the very mineral part of us whose gleaming ore can only be tarnished by 
sentiment. 

My limbs are at rest The man is gone, as quietly and obliquely as he came. I 
do not suppose I will be disturbed at least until dawn. I am anxious to 
record everything, to break through the shameful shell of civilized 
expression and to penetrate into the pulsing recesses of my primal being. I 
want to have what I want to say said before they discover, and perhaps 
destroy, my record. 

We arrived in Charleston about ten o'clock in the morning of my eighteenth 
birthday on a motorcycle which Snaith had stolen from the local blacksmith. 
We were tired and dusty after our long ride. We had stopped only once at a 
truck-drivers' rest on the road. There we drank tea. Snaith fingered me 
under the table but I made him desist because I was anxious to get to 
Charleston as quickly as possible. I feared that my father might already 
have discovered our flight. 

I had told Snaith that I had stolen fifty pounds. That seemed a fortune to 
him anyway. I lied because I felt sure that he would ask me to hand over the 
money to him. He did so, almost as soon as we were on the road. I could 
hardly refuse him, but I congratulated myself on my foresight, for there was 
another two hundred pounds carefully fastened between my breasts under my 
chemise. I had no desire to be dependent upon Snaith. 

We drew to the curb in the main street and, parking the motorcycle, we 
entered a restaurant. We sat upstairs near the window overlooking the street 
and from where I sat I could see the motorcycle resting on the curb. We ate 
breakfast and discussed our plans. It was Snaith's opinion that we didn't 
need to go any farther. We could be married there. I could write and tell my 
father and then, if everything went well, we could both return to the 
village and discuss the future with him. We could do worse, in Snaith's 
opinion, than to settle down and inherit my father's business. 

Inwardly, I laughed. I had one purpose in mind. I intended to board a 
south-bound train that very day. Moreover, I despised the pleading tone in 
Snaith's voice. He was a born drudge in spite of his darkly handsome body. 
The height of his ambition was to exchange his poverty for the profitable 
little fishing business I would inherit from my father. But he must have 
been apprehensive about my reaction to his suggestion because at that moment 
he took my hand across the table. 

"I love you, Helen," he said. 

My dislike increased. I detested him. But I smiled back at him because I was 
still, to some extent, at his mercy. 

"Just as you think, Tom," I said. 

Relief came quickly to his face. He could be comfortable now in his betrayal 
He squeezed my hand and helped me to another cup of tea. I glanced out of 
the window. Down the street a policeman was bending over the parked 
motorcycle, peering at the number plate. Then he took a notebook from his 
pocket and appeared to be comparing numbers. 

As calmly as possible I said to Snaith: "Tom, do you think you would let me 
have some of the money back? I don't like to have nothing, and I'd like to 
buy some clothes for our wedding." 

For a moment he looked suspicious but then his brow cleared and he said: "Of 
course, darling." 

He took out the money importantly and counted out twenty pounds which he 
passed across to me. 

I watched the policeman look up and down the street. Doubtless he was 
waiting for our return. I watched him move back out of sight into a doorway. 
My mind was already made up. I was going to allow Snaith to be arrested. 
Meanwhile I would make good my own escape. I told Snaith that I was going to 
visit the toilet and blew a kiss to him as I crossed the floor. Once 
downstairs, I left the restaurant by the side door. In the sunlight again, 
it occurred to me that there are some men whose necks are made for the rope. 

I breathed a sigh of relief as the train drew out of the station, jerkily, 
until the carriages were properly disposed in motion behind the engine. I 
had been very nervous on the platform. Snaith would probably have been 
arrested and he might have been spiteful enough to give the police 
information about me. But soon, with vast stretches of rough countryside 
rolling off into the distance beyond the window, I fell into a sound sleep 
in the corner of the carriage. 

I woke up to find a young man looking across at me. He was clad in city 
clothes and was perhaps the most elegant man I had seen in my life. I 
flushed under his amused gaze. He blinked his eyes in greeting but said 
nothing. There were two other occupants in the compartment, an old couple, 
perhaps a retired farmer and his wife. I felt at once that they disapproved 
of me. 

A hundred times during the day I felt the young man's eyes upon me, seldom 
on my face, more often on my legs or on my skirt or at the string which 
gathered the top of my dress in rucks over the smooth rise of my breasts. 
His attention, the insinuation in his eyes, and the throbbing motion of the 
train combined to make my flesh, damp from the journey, tingle with 
excitement against the undersurface of my clothes. Toward evening, I got up 
and went out into the corridor. 

I moved along toward the end of the carriage to the little hallway which 
gave on to the toilet and stood looking out of the window at the dusk which 
was spreading to the pale orange horizon. A few moments later, I turned to 
find him standing beside me. 

"It's a tiring journey," he said in a pleasant voice. 

I nodded. 

"Trains are always boring," he said. I agreed. 

"Do you smoke?" He offered me a cigarette from a slim cigarette case. 

I took one although I had never smoked before. He lit it for me and laughed 
when I began to cough immediately. 

"I thought I'd like to try one," I apologized through my coughing. 

"Good for you!" he said. "You must try everything." 

At that moment, the train, which had slowed down, lurched into speed again, 
and the young man, knocked off his balance, came against me heavily. In his 
effort to steady himself, one of his hands gripped my arm, while the other, 
clutching lower down, closed on the upper part of my skirt, rending the 
material. Thus, suddenly, before both our eyes the velvety skin of my thigh 
was visible, pale and thickly fleshed in the gloom of the corridor. His 
apology was cut short by the sight of my face, turned up toward him now, my 
lips wet, expectant, and slightly apart, my glance boldly sensual. I was 
holding him close against me by his lapel. Without a word, he glanced 
quickly along the corridor and ushered me gently into the toilet. 

For some minutes we pressed against one another with our straining bodies, 
our lips stuck together and his right hand kneading at the exposed flesh of 
my thigh; then, moving his hands downward, he raised them again somewhere 
behind my knees under the skirt, upward over the firm bulge of my buttocks, 
until, with one hand on either side, he clamped me close where his cock was. 
With the whole weight of my body balanced on the palms of his hands, I 
thrust my tongue deeply into his mouth, at the same time raising my legs 
round his waist, and then, in this position, he carried me across to the 
toilet seat where he sat down, disclosing his prick with a deft movement, 
and lowered my rigid torso until I felt my cleft split by the blunt power of 
his erection. Such was the intensity of my desire, so heavy was the 
abandoned suspension of my legs, that he penetrated at once to the very pit 
of me. In that position, my long fair hair hanging untidily over my tightly 
shut eyes, I rocked deliriously with all the force of my lower torso. What 
had begun to exist as a dull throb of hunger in the hot-bed of my flanks now 
concentrated to an abscess of stabbing pleasure in the utter profundity of 
my diaphragm and burst, shooting a delicious corrosion through every fissure 
of my flesh. Simultaneously, my nerves registered the final ecstatic 
vibrations of the strong shaft which transfixed me. My trembling thighs were 
wet with the lather of our fleshy collision and between the smooth young 
globes of my tilting buttocks my glistening short hairs, still interwoven 
with his, seeped with a liquid like the viscous fluid of flowers. Under my 
wringing-wet shift his skillful fingers were tracing delicate patterns on my 
back and the satisfied heap of my belly rose and fell against him for want 
of breath. 

A moment later, he gently tilted my chin upward and looked into my face. 

"What's your name?" His grey eyes were amused but gentle at the same time. 

"Helen." 

"Do you often do this?" 

"I did it for the first time yesterday-with a man, I mean." 

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Where do you come from?" I shook my 
head without answering. "All right," he said, "It's none of my business. 
Where are you going?" 

"To Sydney first." 

"I'm going there too," he said. 

I smiled at him, drew his head toward me, and kissed him sensually on the 
lips. But he drew away. 

"Not like that," he said. "Stand up, Helen, and take off your skirt." 

As I was wearing a dress I had to uncover the upper part of my torso as 
well. As I did so, the packet with my money fell out. 

"What's that?" he asked. 

"It's nothing," I said, "It's mine." 

"I don't doubt it," he said casually. "Now, put it down beside your dress 
and come here." 

I did not hesitate to obey. I was not wearing knickers. The upper part of my 
body was clad in a short shift of snow-white linen. It came down only as far 
as my navel. The soft burnished underside of my belly was thus naked except 
for the two elastic thongs of my garterbelt which ran downward to the fleshy 
part of my thighs, framing the gleaming hairs of my cunt, and joining the 
glove-tight neatness of my dull dark stockings which caused the flesh to 
bulge slightly where it issued from them. I went toward him slowly. 

When I reached the edge of the toilet on which he was sitting, he halted me. 
He sat for a moment, gazing at the warm contours of my mound. Then he stood 
up. "Stand up there, Helen," he said. Again I obeyed him. I realized with 
pleasure what he was about to do. Level now with my centre, the smooth, 
inclined plane of my thighs sweeping downward to his lips, it was as though 
some kind of erosion were taking place in my tired limbs. I quivered like a 
reed. A sliding within me mounted to breaking point as I clutched close 
until the electricity mounted again to my nipples and the seed flowed in my 
womb like sand shifting in the tide. 

At the peak of my pleasure, I moaned softly, uttering needless demands, the 
whispered words escaping hoarsely from between my lips until that final 
fractured moment when the orgastic tensions snapped with the elasticity of a 
wet Up somewhere in the most secret part of me. 

And there was more, with the sound of the rails underneath and emptiness in 
the corridor, before I rose to kiss him for the last time, but the train was 
slowing down to enter a station. 

As I slipped the dress back over my warm satisfied flesh, the true immensity 
of the adventure before me filled me with an ungovernable joy of living. 

 CHAPTER THREE 

We must have come far during the day. But I saw very little except movement 
of the sand dunes in the strong sunlight. It was almost white. And, 
occasionally, a few palm trees. 

They placed me on a kind of tent on top of one of the camels. Evidently they 
fear I might be seen by someone in a passing caravan. But the cloth flapped 
about in the air and I could see the swaying train of camels ahead, and 
sometimes a man on foot in a white burnoose, or two or three of them, 
black-faced, sometimes turbaned, and occasionally a man would glance up at 
me. Each time I tried to see in him my lover of the night before. But I 
could never be certain. 

Strangely enough, I felt almost no desire to escape now. I am caught up in 
my own history, which moves on hidden springs which I cannot pretend to 
understand. I suspect that I have abandoned myself so utterly that, were a 
chance of escape to offer itself, I would ignore it. I want the future that 
is in store for me. The discomfort of the day's journey is more than 
compensated for by the acute sense of anticipation which seems to hang at my 
thighs at this moment. It is nearly dark outside the tent. Not much noise in 
the camp. I will continue my account, but I shall have to be careful for I 
may be visited at any moment. 

I suppose what occurred now was inevitable. The nameless young stranger of 
the train-we agreed that we wanted to know nothing more of one another than 
we knew already-deserted me after a few clays in Sydney during which time he 
initiated me into some of the most subtle of erotic pleasures. He left the 
lodging house, where we stayed together as man and wife, taking most of the 
money with him. He left me only ten pounds and an unsigned note which read: 

Dear Helen, You are a most wonderful creature and will go far. Meanwhile, 
with little compunction, I have taken your money. A girl like you has no 
need of it, anyway, not, I'm afraid, that your need, had it existed, would 
have made any difference to my own very real requirements. 

Adieu. 

The theft was a blow. Stranded in Sydney almost without money, I was forced 
to give up temporarily the idea of my flight from Australia. I found it 
difficult to blame the young man, although I would willingly have seen him 
hanged to have my money back. 

My inexperience, together with my desire to be near ocean-going ships, took 
me down to the docks in whose precincts all the flotsam and jetsam of the 
big seaport gathered. There, in one of the dockside cinemas, I allowed 
myself to be picked up by a man whose hand glided under my skirt during the 
performance. He was a sailor and he took me to a cheap hotel in the 
neighbourhood. In the squalor of his bed, I surrendered to him all the 
delights of my young female limbs. He took me brutally, his massive body 
sprawled on top of my sensitive flesh, mouthing obscenities at the moment at 
which his lust parted from him. Afterward, he called me a whore and a low 
bitch, doubtless because his lack of education caused him to be 
conscience-stricken by the intensity of his own pleasure. It was an 
experience which I would not have missed but which, in its unimaginative 
haste, paled very quickly. 

He had promised to get me a passage to Singapore on one of the ships. In 
Singapore, he insinuated, a healthy young girl like myself could find 
lucrative work. I would earn enough money to travel farther west in comfort. 
It was only after he had deserted me for two days and two nights, leaving me 
utterly penniless, that I realized he had no intention of returning. 

I had some difficulty in leaving the lodging-house because my sailor had 
left without paying the bill. The landlord, a heavy man of nearly sixty, 
threatened to send for the police. He relented, but only after I had allowed 
him to take his pleasure of me in the cellar where the beer barrels were 
kept. He took me there to be out of the way of his wife, and, as it was a 
stone floor, he threw a few potato sacks down to protect my naked thighs. 
Afterward, he drew two glasses of beer, toasted my health, and gave me a few 
shillings for my pocket. As I left, he patted my shoulder in a paternal way 
and told me to look after myself. 

Free again, with all my possessions in one small case, I wandered through 
the narrow streets near the docks. I was held by the loading cranes which 
rose above the rooftops and by the foghorns of the ships which would soon 
sail for foreign countries. I had no idea of what I should do. I was 
beginning to realise the danger of letting myself be taken too easily. I had 
not eaten for two days and was farther off than ever from that soft narcotic 
climate in which I felt my whole being would flourish. Thus I repelled the 
advances of the various sailors who tried to pick me up on the streets and 
finally I entered a quiet cafe, sat far away from the door, and ordered 
something to eat. 

I had been sitting there alone for over half an hour, wondering what I was 
going to do for a place to sleep, when a young man entered. He was obviously 
a half-caste, but he was very expensively dressed in a white silk shirt and 
a well-cut blue suit. He sat down first at a table close to me, and then, 
when I did not seem to notice him, he came and sat down beside me. 

"Are you alone?" he asked. 

I nodded. 

He smiled at me. "You look unhappy," he said. "Have you anywhere to go?" His 
eyes were on the small case beside me. 

I shook my head. 

"Tired?" 

"Yes." 

"You can sleep at my place for the night," he said. "We can discuss the 
future tomorrow." 

Without waiting for a reply, he lifted my case, paid the bill, and walked 
outside to his parked car. I had never seen one like it before. It was a new 
Jaguar. I followed mechanically. I was tired and desperate and he looked 
more interesting than any of the sailors who hung around the streets and one 
of whom I would eventually have had to accept as a lover merely to get a 
bed. 

We drove through the streets without speaking. Once only, his hand, slipping 
from the gear lever, fell onto my knee, and his grip tightened momentarily, 
but whether his gesture was meant to be reassuring or indicative of what he 
would expect of me I had no idea. His hand returned to change gears and the 
car drew up alongside a smart apartment building. 

We mounted in the elevator to the top floor. There we entered his luxurious 
penthouse apartment which overlooked the city. A smartly made-up blonde 
maid, whose too-fitting black dress accentuated the sensual curves of her 
breasts and thighs, opened the door for us. She looked me up and down before 
her employer, in a cold voice, ordered her to take my bag and prepare the 
guest bedroom She did so, undulating her plump buttocks as she walked away. 
"Come and have a drink," my host said when she had disappeared. "Then you 
can have a bath and get cleaned up." 

He ushered me across the thickly carpeted hall into a lounge with a very 
low, pale-grey ceiling, softly lambent with concealed lighting. The carpet 
was thick and pure white and strewn with variously coloured rugs. The walls, 
grey like the ceiling, supported modern paintings of nudes in erotic 
positions. The stone bust of the upper torso of a young woman stood on a 
draped pedestal in one corner. The furniture consisted mainly of divans, 
strewn apparently haphazardly round the room, and covered with broad-striped 
red-and-white silk. 

My host, who introduced himself as Tony, pressed a button beside a long 
mirror on the wall, and a complete bar, glittering with an array of liquor 
bottles, swung into view. 

He noticed my fascination, smiled, and said: "What will you have?" 

When I hesitated, he said: "You haven't been in Sydney very long, have you?" 

I blushed and shook my head. 

"Don't worry," he said, "You can tell me all about it afterward. Meanwhile, 
I will give you something very special." 

A moment later, he returned to me, holding a small glass containing a 
violet-coloured liquid in his hand. 

"Drink that," he said, his eyes hooded for a moment as his glance fell to 
where my young breasts, nervous under the thin material of my dress, rose 
and fell with my breathing. "Drink it slowly. It will do you the world of 
good. And sit down, my dear." 

As I drank it, he watched me with a quizzical expression on his face. It was 
a sallow, handsome face, and his body looked strong and slim. 

"Do you know, Helen," he said after a moment, "I believe that in the end we 
all get what we want ... that is to say, if we want all that is implied in 
having any one thing." 

I laughed for the first time. 

"It's easy for you to talk!" I said. 

"But why?" he said in a surprised tone. "I want all this." He took in the 
room with a gesture. 

"But what if I happened to want it?" 

"Well you are here. The place is for the moment at your disposal Perhaps you 
will find you don't want it." 

"But I do!" 

"We shall see," he said slowly. "Meanwhile, have one more drink before you 
take your bath." 

He filled my glass from the same bottle as before. As I drank, he moved 
across the room and switched on the radio. I settled comfortably on the 
divan and listened to the slow music. 

"See, the bath is already filled!" 

It was such a bath as I had never seen before, sunk into the floor and made 
entirely of black marble. 

"You will look like Venus in that bath," he said with a smile. "When you 
have bathed, you will find your bedroom through that door on the left. There 
are clothes in the wardrobe. Help yourself." So saying, he left me, quietly 
closing the door behind him. 

When he had gone, I threw off my clothes. My naked body, reflected in the 
long mirrors which covered the walls, threw itself back at me from all 
sides, full, lissome, and gleaming whitely in bold contours. It was the 
first time that I had had the opportunity to see myself from so many 
positions. I sat on the edge of the bath, my thighs startlingly pale against 
the black marble, and then, softly, on the downy skin of my swelling 
buttocks, I slid down into the warm scented water which closed over my 
curving loins with a sensation of utter intoxication. And then I was lying 
at full length in the big bath, my pale, taut breasts breaking the surface, 
my nipples mauve and opaque, like fat little buoys around which the water, 
in ever increasing circles, moved gently away. 

I washed myself with the huge, soft sponge that had been left for me. The 
soap was smooth and creamy on my glistening skin. When I stood up, the 
bubbles, like sea froth, mingled with the fair wisps of my short hairs under 
which my cunt, like the bulge of a tunnel, thrust itself forward, bearing 
beneath it a furled red flag, the sullen lips of my sex. Below them, in a 
voluptuous rise, my broad thighs gleamed like gold pillars, subtly shadowed 
where the smooth lines of my heavy muscles twisted obliquely in their strong 
growth, while my dimpled knees, like sunken water-lilies, lurked just below 
the surface of the water which the discarded heats of my body had caused to 
cloud so that my feet were no longer visible on the black marble below them. 

Dried on the soft turkish towels which had been provided for me, I walked 
naked into the bedroom . 

The ceiling of this room was low like that of the lounge, only everything in 
the room was white-the damask curtains, the silk-lined walls, the soft 
carpet, the dressing table with its vast curved mirror-the only spots of 
colour being the various articles of female toilet on the dressing table, 
the black sheets on the bed, and the gold picture frame on the wall which 
was filled with folds of soft crimson velvet at the centre of which there 
was a gold tube, the shape of a horn, which contained a splendid 
white-and-purple orchid. 

The wardrobe was a fitted one, contained in the wall behind a mirror. At 
first, I paid no attention to it. I crossed to the dressing table, examined 
the various perfumes, creams and varnishes, and slowly, watching the 
graceful movements of my nude torso in the crystal mirror, I began to make 
myself up. First I scented myself all over, the tender surfaces of my thighs 
and arms, my breasts and neck, and the soft yellowish furrow between the 
impeccable globes of my buttocks. Then I began to paint myself, my nails, 
toenails and lips, a bright crimson, my eyelids and the soft shadows under 
my eyes, touched green with silver, the various hollows of my body 
accentuated by touching them with gradual spots of yellow-green and 
blue-green, and my long eyelashes a jet black. Then I brushed my long, 
platinum-blonde hair until it shone, and stood back to examine the entire 
effect. 

At that moment, a breath of wind parted the curtains and I moved across the 
room to the window. I discovered that it was open and that it led to a small 
balcony which overlooked the city. I lit a cigarette and stood in my woman's 
nakedness on the exposed balcony. I pain no attention to the men who peered 
at me from the windows opposite and only returned to the room when I had 
finished my cigarette. 

The wardrobe next. I found there long dresses of various materials. I chose 
one of heavy silver lame, slipped into it and examined myself in the mirror. 
The dress was cleverly cut, with almost no front to it. Beginning at the 
navel, at which there was a finely wrought silver button, it was cut away 
downward in a long spearhead so that it left the lower belly, the cunt, and 
the whole taper of the thighs and legs entirely exposed. The train of the 
dress reached the floor and acted as a superb background for the starkly 
exposed soft front surface of the body. It was a strapless dress which left 
arms and shoulders entirely naked and, at the same time, because of subtle 
reinforcements, held the breasts high in two dully glowing silver cups. At 
that moment I had a brainwave. I found some silver ribbon in one of the 
dressing table drawers, and, removing the orchid from its horn, I tied it 
neatly in position, just over and obscuring the strong sensuality of my 
pussy. Then I stepped into a pair of high-heeled evening slippers and made 
my way back to the lounge. 

Tony was reclining on one of the divans with a glass of whisky on a small 
table beside him He shot me an admiring glance as I entered, but did not 
rise to greet me. 

"You must be hot with all those clothes on," he said with a smile. "Help 
yourself to a drink." 

When I had done so and was lying on another divan near him, he asked me if I 
was hungry. 

"Not in the way you mean," I said slowly. 

"In that case," he said immediately, "We might have the show before dinner." 
He got up, turned off most of the light, leaving only those which shed 
softly on the divan on which I was lying, and then he returned to his own 
and made himself comfortable. 

"What's all that for?" I said in surprise. "Don't you want to come over 
here?" 

"Don't ask so many questions, Helen," he said. "I'll explain everything soon 
enough. Meanwhile, relax and smoke a cigarette." He threw one over to me and 
I lit it with the lighter on the small table beside me. 

The minutes crept by. I was exasperated to find that he wasn't even looking 
at me. He was lying back smoking against the cushions on his own divan and 
he appeared to be thinking of something. 

About five minutes later I realized that his glance was directed on a door 
to the right of me. I rolled over and looked. 

In the doorway, the maid who had ushered me in was standing. That itself 
would have been strange enough. But that was not all. She was completely 
nude. 

This big girl had her hands on her naked hips and was looking across at me 
sardonically. Her magnificent torso rippled as she moved, incredibly slowly, 
across the carpet toward me. My first impulse was to escape, but her slow 
movement and her eyes fixed on mine seemed to hypnotize me. I found myself 
powerless to move. There was a constriction at my belly and I breathed 
heavily. The luscious germinal juices mounted through my trembling thighs 
and my breasts quivered under the silver lame. She was standing over me, 
looking down. I stubbed my cigarette and shot a quick glance at Tony, who 
said nothing and watched with a lazy smile on his lips. 

Suddenly, without warning, she whipped away the orchid from my cunt and cast 
it on the carpet. 

Then, still without speaking, her fingers slipped quickly to the fasteners 
of my dress which soon fell aside, exposing the whole front of my torso to 
her gaze. The tightness at my throat would not permit me to cry out. 
Terrified, I lay helpless and abandoned beneath her. 

At her next movement, I resisted with all my strength. But the strange mask 
bore downward, with the power of muscle, until I felt myself pinioned under 
soft and subtle gestures of fertility. A cry became a groan, fighting at 
impending thickness, a giving way. In response to the strange and 
extravagant intrusion which worked gently at the mastic substance which rose 
in my prickling hairs, my fists, which had pounded blindly, became relaxed, 
tensions cracked, and opposition died in me. The whole sheath of my lower 
torso was involved in the urgent systole and diastole of desire. I abandoned 
myself to the strength of my assailant and to the curious gaze of the man 
whose presence, felt rather than seen, seemed to cause my body to attain an 
abandoned luxuriance such as I had never before experienced. The sap rose 
under my skin. My legs, once tightly closed in their reluctance to take part 
in this unfamiliar orgy, became hot and flaccid as they widened to contain 
the gleaming oval movement of the woman's buoyant hips, and the soft cleft 
of my deeper consciousness was peeled as though by turf, exposing my dewy 
shoots which were radiant in abrasion. My mouth slackened and my hands, 
which had been idle since resistance died in me, sought to participate. 
Simultaneously, I felt myself brought to the knowledge of a new seat of 
pleasure as one of her slender darts pierced the loamy oasis which 
heretofore had been innocent of all sensation. Riven now at twin poles of 
delight, my glistening torso slithered under discs, flats, and surfaces, 
under flanges of containment and protrusion, all seeking the weld of female 
unison. My breasts, charged with ambiguous alluvial sensations, slipped to 
and fro under their counterparts, and, at my sudden daring gesture, a 
shuddering groan escaped her and her reanimated body leapt with a soft smack 
on the limited gyration allowed it by the strong clamp of my thighs. 

A moment later, before the huge symphony of our limbs had attained its 
climax, and before I had time to realise her purpose, she had ballooned 
about, bringing heat and darkness to my face and joining me in sweet and 
cyclic suffocation. At last, in that perfect circle of moist female passion, 
our plumes were spent and our bodies met in a subsidence of lavish abandon. 
Spent, tremulous and glad, we lay there for some minutes, inhaling deeply, 
in a welter of glistening limbs. 

"A delicious spectacle," Tony was saying. "Helen, I want to congratulate you 
on your quick wit. You were magnificent! And now that you ... eh ... know 
one another, allow me to introduce you. Helen, this is Ursula." 

We rolled apart. 

Ursula laughed in a low voice "You're okay Helen," she said. She pressed the 
white wet fold of my thigh. 

"That's enough for the moment, Ursula my pet," Tony said with a smile. 
"Enough, as some liar said, is as good as a feast." He got up and went over 
to the bar. "Now we'll have a drink and get down to business." He returned 
with two long whiskies and soda which he presented to us, and then, 
installed on a chair opposite the divan on which we were still reclining in 
a nude state, he lit a cigarette and allowed his eyes to fall to the carpet. 
Presently he looked up. 

"That," he said, "was by way of initiation. I suppose that was the first 
time you have made love with a woman. It probably won't be the last. Anyway, 
that is what I want to talk to you about Believe it or not, Helen, there are 
here in Sydney many rich women who will pay a great deal of money to have a 
young woman." 

Once again Ursula pressed my thigh. "It's easy, Helen," she said. "And the 
more they want, the more they pay." 

"A business like any other, naturally," Tony said casually. I said nothing. 

He looked at me with meaning, and continued: "The only difficulty is to find 
those women. It is not easy. But they exist. Yes they exist, young, old, 
fat, thin, with only one idea in their heads. That is where I come in. I 
find the woman and arrange the fees which come directly to me. Ursula and 
the other girls do the necessary, for which they receive whatever is given 
them by the woman-money, trinkets, sometimes costly gifts-and a fixed salary 
and a wardrobe from me." 

They were both looking at me now, waiting for me to say something. 

"You are interested?" 

"I suppose so," I said hesitantly. 

"But there are a number of conditions," Tony went on in a precise voice. "I 
had better acquaint you with them before you make up your mind." 

"Oh, they're reasonable enough," Ursula said with a laugh. 

"The first is that you cannot set up in business for yourself, the second is 
that you must never let the customer know you are working for me-you do it 
because you like it, you understand? The third is that you must accept 
whatever assignment I allot to you, there will be no question of your 
refusing. The fourth, that you must be available at all times." He 
hesitated, looked at me fixedly for a moment. "And there is one last 
condition, you can't quit-is that understood?" 

I looked at Ursula. She smiled reassuringly. I nodded. There was no question 
of giving up the present luxury. The future would look after itself. 

Perhaps Tony doubted me for he said next: "I'd better warn you that one or 
two of the girls in the past have tried to quit. They are sorry for it now, 
you understand? They are no longer good-looking. They couldn't make a living 
as a whore at the docks." 

Once again Ursula pressed my thigh. "It's all right, darling," she said. "As 
long as you play straight with Tony you've nothing to worry about." 

Finally I agreed. In that way I became for a time a woman's woman, the 
adored and pampered mistress of rich women who expected me to dress, speak 
and act as they did. I moved in the hot-house world of scented boudoirs, and 
flirted with the husbands whom I cuckolded. 

 CHAPTER FOUR 

Last night no one came. Once or twice I heard a movement outside the tent 
and I hurried to conceal my journal. But no one disturbed me so I was able 
to write on into the early hours. At the first signs of dawn I was 
exasperated. I have travelled a long way, emptying myself of whatever would 
not serve my insistent desire. To be denied, to have one's existence 
denied-are there not at least twenty men with the caravan?-is the most 
subtle of all punishments. 

It is still early tonight. After an almost sleepless night, another hot day 
on the desert, nothing but sand, the harsh cries of the camel-men, some 
mutton stew, a few dates, glances whose meaning I was unable to 
comprehend-and then, the oasis where we are camped now. The men seemed 
restless. I have a feeling that we are going to arrive somewhere soon. 

I was installed in a small luxury flat of my own. I had been working for 
Tony for about six months. First there was the wife of a prominent 
businessman, then a German countess who was living for a short while in 
Sydney, and then there was a lull. I had been idle for the best part of two 
weeks. My salary was still paid. My mind, free of the cloying demands of 
rich women, was once again focused on the possibility of leaving Australia. 
I had lost my fear of Tony. What, after all, could he do? I could be 
hundreds of miles away on the ocean before he even missed me. I had plenty 
of money to buy a ticket. 

It was a fine morning. I gave way to the impulse to go immediately to a 
shipping office and book my passage. I walked there with a feeling of 
immense freedom. I had enough money for my requirements for the next few 
months. I had not a care in the world. 

The shipping clerk accepted my money and gave me tickets for a ship which 
left for Singapore in ten days time. But before I left the office he 
counseled me to have my passport in order before the sailing date. It was 
the first time I had heard that such things as passports were required. He 
gave me the address of the passport office. 

There, I made the stupid blunder of admitting that I Was only nineteen. 

"In that case," the official said, "your application will have to be signed 
by your parent or guardian." 

"But ... my parents are dead." 

"Your legal guardian then, Miss," the official said politely. 

I took the papers home. I didn't know what to do next. I could hardly ask 
Tony's advice, nor one of our mutual acquaintances. And I didn't know anyone 
else except the charwoman, whom I suspected Tony had planted on me as a spy. 

Two days later, Tony called me on the telephone. He said he would pick me up 
in about half an hour. I Was a little nervous when I opened the door to him. 

He was very pleasant. He said he had nothing to do and felt like taking a 
drive in the country. He would be glad of my company. I slipped into a 
two-piece costume and accompanied him to his waiting car. 

Soon we were right out in the open country. Tony did not talk much. He 
accepted the cigarettes I offered him mechanically and concentrated on his 
driving. The car sped on for about an hour and then nosed up a little side 
road round the bend of which a small farmstead became visible. 

"Where are we going?" I said to him. 

"A friend of mine lives there," he said. "We might have lunch there." 

As we drove into the yard, a squat man with powerful shoulders came out of 
the house to meet us. He was dressed in dungarees and looked like an 
ex-convict. His broad, close-dipped head was tilted to one side 
questioningly, and his face as he drew near was twisted in a grin of 
recognition. He was a man of about fifty, with a broken nose, massive hands, 
and small close-set grey eyes which, as they flitted across my face, seemed 
to look through me. 

He leaned down to the open window on Tony's side. 

"Trouble, Tony?" 

"The same thing," Tony said in reply, and at that moment it dawned on me 
that he knew of my plans. 

As he turned to address me, I found myself saying, "No ... no, please!" 

"No what, Helen?" Tony said drily. 

I didn't answer. 

"Get out of the car, Helen." 

"You're leaving me with him?" 

"Do as you're told!" 

I got out. Tony followed me. 

"Put her in the barn for the moment," he said to the man. 

The man gripped me tightly by the upper arm and drove me before him to a 
wooden building on the left of the house. 

"Keep your trap shut or it will be worse for you," he said, as he thrust me 
roughly inside. And then the door closed and the key turned in the lock. 

It was quite light inside the bam. Oblongs of dust-moted light jutted 
downward from holes in the roof, falling palely on the scattered heaps of 
straw. I sat down on the straw and lit a cigarette. But the fear of what 
they might do to me made me feel sick to my stomach and I stubbed it after 
the first few puffs. I sat for several minutes thinking wildly of escape. 

Tony stood over the brazier watching the crossbar cattle-brand become 
red-hot. Occasionally he glanced over at me where I cringed in fear on a 
heap of straw. 

Duke, the squat ex-convict, stood over my naked, trembling body, ready to 
prohibit my escape. The sharp texture of the straw prickled at the tender 
skin of my flanks and my whole torso, glistening with a frantic sweat of 
fear, gleamed in a rigid curve under his lustful eyes. 

"Go ahead," Tony said suddenly, "Do what you like. It will be a few minutes 
before this iron is hot enough anyway." 

No sooner had he said it than Duke leaned over me, gripping my upper arms in 
his powerful hands and forcing my shoulders back on to the straw. Rippling 
under the sweat, all the moulded muscles of my soft underside were thus 
exposed to the man's eyes, which at once fixed themselves on the nervous 
clot of hair between the lip of my belly and the pudgy bowl of my tightly 
closed thighs. He released his grip to unbutton his trousers, leaving red 
splotches where his fingers had pressed into my upper arms. Then he bared 
his lower front to me, a powerful flower, stuck close with wiry, black hairs 
under which his white skin gleamed moistly, like a mushroom in moonlight. At 
the sight of his cock my fear left me, my belly and thighs took on the 
consistency of spawn, the latter opening as my legs arrowed at the knees, 
anticipating the bandit shock that would scrape the bottom of me like a 
ship's keel. Duke seemed fascinated by my arched hips, by the opaque 
tightness of my round little belly sunk between my broad upper thighs. He 
sank on his big knees on the straw between the hot scissors of my legs, and, 
guiding his prick in with his fingers, he penetrated me until his hard belly 
was at mine and his chest, under his sweatshirt, was riding on the firm ball 
bearings of my nipples. I ran my fingers gently through his hair and brought 
his mouth against my soft, wet lips. He groaned. With all the wiles of my 
imagination I gave him pleasure, meeting his onslaught with caresses and 
encouragement where he had expected nothing but violence and resistance, and 
soon his movements were transformed into those of a doting lover, and his 
body, as it rose and fell passionately, did so almost tenderly as though he 
were afraid of alienating me and depriving himself of my wonderful, soft 
connivance. As his male seed rose in his rod, his torso was shot through 
with a slow subterranean tremor, and, softening my whole body toward him, I 
cradled him into a long, delicately protracted erotic ecstasy. His seed 
swallowed by the warm sluice of my loins, I continued to caress him until 
his heavy breathing subsided and he opened eyes that were no longer the eyes 
of an enemy. I kissed him softly on the lips. He accepted the kiss with dumb 
bewilderment, "Very beautiful!" Tony said ironically from where he stood by 
the brazier. "Now get up, Duke, and let's get on with the business." 

I felt the man on top of me freeze. 

"Quick, we haven't got all day." 

Duke got up slowly. He stood back and adjusted his dress. 

Tony smiled ironically over to me. "And now, Helen," he said. "You're going 
to be taught a lesson." 

The brand, in the shape of a cross, gleamed at the end of the pole. He 
touched it against a wisp of straw which flared instantly. 

"Turn her over and hold her down, Duke." 

"Aw, leave her alone," Duke said. 

I flashed a pleading glance at him. 

Tony, noticing it, said. "So you've fallen for the bitch, have you, Duke? 
Well, isn't that romantic?" He turned to me. "You're going to be branded, 
Helen," he said. "On your left buttock. If you turn over and he still, it 
will be over in a moment. If you struggle, you're liable to get burned in 
other places. Will you hold her, Duke, or would you rather watch?" 

Duke glowered at the floor and said nothing. 

Tony approached me with the gleaming brand. 

"Turn over, Helen," he said dangerously. 

I stared at him and then, when he was within a yard of me, I cried out: 
"Stop him, Duke!" 

The ex-convict moved with a rapidity which one would not have expected in so 
heavy a man. Tony, turning to protect himself from the sudden assault, 
raised the brand at Duke, who grasped it at the haft in one huge hand, at 
the same time bringing his short, thick knee up with incredible force into 
the other's groin. Tony, his eyes full of amazement, let out a horrible 
scream and fell writhing to the floor. Duke measured his distance and kicked 
out with his sharp boot deliberately at the other's head. It landed with a 
blunt thud. Tony twitched for a moment and lay still. 

I stood up, still naked, and moved over to Duke. I took the brand which he 
was still clutching at the haft and threw it on the straw. Then I walked 
silently into his arms and pressed him against my warm body. "Thanks, Duke," 
I said. "Now let's get out of here." 

"We'll take the car," Duke said. "Just a moment," I said, and stooped down 
and took Tony's wallet from his inside pocket. Then, slipping into my 
clothes, I followed Duke quickly through the door. He went into the house 
and came out a moment later with a bag. 

We drove quickly out of the yard and soon we were heading at top speed along 
the main road. "We're going to Melbourne," he said. "I've got friends 
there." Looking back the way we had come, I noticed a pillar of smoke rising 
from the direction of the bam. I said nothing to Duke, whose eyes were glued 
on the road in front of him. 

When a man is involved in the warm chrysalis of a woman, the confederacy of 
motion, the mutual seed pleasures, can take place on various axes. We had 
writhed on soft gimbals in a hot, seizing flux and reflux, quavering, 
vacillating, gyrating, hairs against hairs, mingling, sliding on soft 
graphite, passing and re-passing, hips, shoulders, mouths, hollows, a navel 
to a mouth, a thigh to an arm, a breast between buttocks, the bellies 
slithering, until, after an hour of drunken love, we had reeled into a final 
position, each lusting for his spasm, such that I, looking down between the 
two smooth-marble hillocks of my breasts at the hot, shuddering tub of my 
chevron-tipped belly, saw, in my squatting position, my own greedy 
containment of the male thing, hard and perpendicular, from which I derived 
my pleasure. I was rotating slowly on the soft orbs of my buttocks while the 
man, very white under his crinkly black hairs, was lying in a prone position 
stark naked below me, his hands at my hips, abetting, urging my fluctuation. 
The big, iron bed, the lair of our erotic crucifixion, creaked beneath us as 
his spike, gleaming with the silvery wetness of my passion, and my more 
soft, insistent sheath met and re-met, withdrew partially, and joined in the 
next and deeper thrust. Soon his hands fell away from my hips and his 
clenched fists prised themselves under his own buttocks to raise his phallic 
spine close at my furrow. This last hard movement, interpreted by my body as 
the symptom of the imminent emission from his, caused every valve of my 
carnality to be flooded with the juices of erotic sensation, and rising 
again for the last time on my dripping thighs I brought the whole weight of 
my smoldering torso down upon the blunt, thick spurting thing which clove me 
into delirium. At that moment he toppled me under him and the hairs of his 
chest were like live terminals against the amorphous sludge of my breasts, 
while my greedy little belly shuddered against him in an effort to drain him 
dry. The tremors in my wrists, flanks and calves continued for some time 
under the sweet suffocation that I continued to experience beneath his spent 
weight. 

Later, I eased him onto the bed beside me. 

"Well?" 

"What?" 

"You promised me good news, Duke." He grinned, moving one of his hands 
between the dripping softness of my thighs. "Tonight, Helen," he said. 

I pulled him close to me, so that the tips of my breasts touched his chest 
and our thighs met. "You mean it?" 

"I'm smuggling you aboard tonight," he said. "The ship sails in the 
morning." 

"Where for?" 

"Singapore," he said. 

I put my tongue between his broad lips. 

"Take me, Duke," I whispered. 

His finger was already at work in the mounting juice between my legs. 

 CHAPTER FIVE 

We are camped tonight near a town. Before I was finally led to the tent 
which, nightly, is prepared for me, I had time to gaze at the white walls, 
at the minarets, at the straggling dwellings of the poor which ride up the 
side of a hill. 

Last night, for the second time, I was not called upon. The uncertainty of 
my existence is exasperating. I affirm that existence, nakedly and purely, 
through my sex. Or rather, it is affirmed for me by the desire of another to 
possess my body. Sentiments are death. I have shed them all. I want no part 
of them, want them to be no part of me. Apart from the mind which, for the 
last time, is taking the trouble to record the events which have led up to 
my new and purer existence, the mind which I shall allow to die as soon as 
the record is complete, I am only my sex, only thighs, belly and breasts, 
ready to experience and to give experience, ready to feed, but more vitally 
than any of those sub aqueous plants which, in the pale beauty which draws, 
destroy that which is attracted. My tentacles too are fatal, but only to 
what is not relevant, to what is not carnal, that is to say, to all that is 
civilized. 

But what is exasperating is my inability to command a meeting. I cannot 
seduce if I am not near. No one comes. But, though I am temporarily 
unsatisfied, I am not afraid, for I suspect-the idea grows on me-that I 
already know my ultimate destiny. We shall see. 

In the hold, on a mattress between two giant crates, I was very close to the 
throb of the ship's engines. Once a day Duke, who had signed on as one of 
the crew, visited me with food. He sat and watched me while I ate, and then, 
after I smoked a cigarette, or even while I was smoking it, he would caress 
me below my skirt until, fully aroused, I lay back and allowed him to take 
me on the mattress. 

This went on for over a week. By that time we were far out to sea, ploughing 
our way toward Singapore. Then, one day, we were discovered. 

The Second Officer, catching sight of Duke, his pockets stuffed with food, 
became suspicious. He followed Duke down to the hold. 

There, just after I had begun to eat, he came upon us. 

"You are a stowaway?" he said to me. It was almost a question, although, on 
a cargo ship, I don't see how there could have been any doubt about it. 

Duke stood up. For a moment I thought he was going to attack the officer but 
he evidently changed his mind. 

"Duke, report at once to the bosun! Tell him to put you in irons! You, 
madame, will come with me." 

Duke, like a whipped dog, slunk away. I was never to see him again. When he 
had gone, the officer helped me up from the mattress, and walked me in front 
of him toward the ladder. 

"Will I be sent back to Australia?" I said nervously. 

"We certainly won't put back for you," he said sharply. "Further than that, 
I'm not in a position to say what will happen to you. Now get going. You're 
going before the Captain." 

As we walked across the deck toward the stern, the eyes of the seamen who 
worked there followed me. One of them whistled. The officer ignored him. I 
followed behind him, finding it difficult to walk on the tilting deck on my 
high heels. 

We climbed down through a companionway to the Captain's cabin. 

"Wait here," the officer said. He knocked and entered. 

A moment later he came out and told me to enter. 

As I did so, he closed the door behind me and I heard him climb back up 
through the companionway. 

I was in a fairly large-sized cabin, furnished with dark wood, hair sofas, 
and brass fittings. The Captain, a heavy, red-haired man with bulbous blue 
eyes in which there were red specks, looked me up and down from where he sat 
behind his desk. A map was spread out in front of him and hung down almost 
to the floor on one side. He was not wearing his cap and his carrot-red hair 
stuck up in an angry shock on his head. 

After a moment's silence he said: "Are you Duke's wife?" 

I shook my head. 

"You're his whore, then?" 

I flushed. 

"Answer me, woman, what the hell are you doing on my ship?" 

"I want to go to Singapore, sir." 

"Oho!" he said with a sneer, "So you want to go to Singapore, do you?" 

I nodded. 

"This ... is ... not ... a ... passenger ... ship!" he thundered. I said 
nothing. 

"You couldn't pay for your passage?" 

"Oh yes, but I haven't got a passport." 

"You haven't got a passport. And do you think they would let you ashore at 
Singapore without a passport?" 

I didn't know what to say. 

"How much money have you got? Put it on the desk!" 

I took the money out of my bag and placed it in front of him. He gazed at it 
in amazement and then counted it. There was more than five hundred pounds. 

"Quite a little fortune you have here," he said more quietly. "Where did you 
steal it?" 

"I didn't steal it." 

"We shall see. Meanwhile, I shall take care of it. What is Duke to you?" 

"Just a friend." 

"You're lying. A man doesn't smuggle a woman on board for nothing. You're 
his whore, aren't you?" 

"We've made love, if that's what you mean." 

"What else d'you think I mean? You whore for him. You're his tart. It's 
plain English." His plain English was uttered with an Irish intonation. 
"What's your name?" 

"Helen." 

"This is not a tea party, you damn whore! I asked you your name! Smith, 
Jones, Jackson, Green or Fauntleroy?" 

"Smith," I said quietly. 

"Where are you from?" He had begun to take down the details in a notebook. 
"Melbourne." 

"Age?" 

"Nineteen." 

The questions followed one after another until finally he laid down his pen, 
blotted the entry and closed the book. Then he stood up. 

"You'll work while you're on board my ship," he said. "Get this cabin 
cleaned up. I'll attend to you later." He walked toward the door. 

"Will you let me go at Singapore?" I said. 

"You'll be put ashore where you came on board," he said shortly. "The police 
will want to ask a few questions, no doubt." 

It was late at night when he returned. He had been drinking heavily. I was 
sitting, reading on one of the horsehair sofas. He swayed drunkenly into the 
cabin, looked almost surprised when he saw me, and then he leered. 

"You stand up when I come in, whore!" he bawled. I stood up. 

"If you were my daughter, I'd flay you alive!" he said. He staggered over to 
a small cabinet and helped himself to some whisky. When he had gulped it 
down, he turned to face me again. The anger seemed to have gone out of his 
expression. His eyes dropped to my legs and moved up again over my haunches 
to my breasts. 

"You're not a bad shape," he said with an ingratiating smile. "Sit down, 
girl. You'll take a drink?" 

"I wouldn't mind." 

"That's that spirit! You'll find the old man's not so bad if you're 
accommodating." He winked at me, staggered once again over to the cabinet, 
and carried a full glass of whisky back to me. 

I accepted it with a pleasant smile and he sat down beside me. Putting his 
arm round me, he said: "Drink Up, girl, it's good for you." 

"I'm hungry," I said. "I haven't had anything to eat today." 

"Nothing to eat?" He frowned. "Hold on then, and I'll get you something." He 
left the cabin. 

Five minutes later he returned with a cold chicken and some bread. He sat me 
down at his desk and watched me eat. I was reminded at once of Duke who, 
daily, had done the same thing. There was no question in my mind that this 
sea captain intended to have me afterward. That itself did not worry me. But 
I intended to leave the ship at Singapore. To go back to Australia was, 
among other things, dangerous, for I had every reason to believe that if he 
wasn't dead from the kick on the head Tony had perished when the bam caught 
fire. For all I knew, there might already have been a warrant out for my 
arrest. This would be almost certain if Tony had spoken to Ursula before he 
called for me. 

"Will you let me ashore at Singapore?" He did not reply. 

"You can keep all the money," I said softly. 

"We'll talk about that some other time," he said slyly. "There's many days 
at sea between us and Singapore." 

I lowered my eyes demurely. 

He chuckled. 'I'll think it over," he said, drawing me onto his knee. "For 
now, I've got other things on my mind." 

He put his hard, calloused hand on the smooth curve of my knee, and his 
fingers under my thin dress worked at the rising flesh of my thigh. 
Suddenly, an idea struck him 

"See here," he said, "I've got a present for you." 

He got up from under me, crossed the cabin, and rummaged around in a chest 
of drawers. A moment later, he turned and threw me a pair of sheer 
black-silk stockings and a tiny frilly garter belt. 

"Put them on, girl," he said. "I'd like to see you in them." 

He sat down in an easy chair which commanded a full view of the cabin. 

I undressed slowly before his excited gaze, slipping my thin dress up over 
my smooth thighs, off the superb thrust of my hips, and finally along the 
swan's neck posture of my arms. Soon I was completely in the nude, my full, 
pointed breasts pouting freely in their firm silhouette. Then, slowly, I 
drew on the black gauze-like fabric of the stockings through which my creamy 
skin glinted with pale sensuality. Then, fixing the provocative garter belt 
on the sullen weight of my hips, I attached the fittings to the tops of the 
stockings, bending my gleaming torso backward and forward to facilitate the 
operation. I stepped into my high-heeled shoes, took a deep breath to tauten 
the curve of my bosom, tongued my lips wet, and, with one hand on my hip, 
shot him a suggestive glance. He was breathing deeply in the tub-like 
armchair, his prominent blue eyes transfixed by the delicate calix of my 
navel. 

"Move!" he said hoarsely, "Move slowly...." 

The small, smooth mound of my belly rose and fell with the graceful 
movements of my long satin legs and my full creamy haunches trembled with 
each step. Suddenly my limbs were invaded with the desire to turn myself 
into sex's instrument, and, rotating my hips in a motion of heavy 
sensuality, I glimpsed my powerful sex, at the centre of my white body, 
circling like a bee uncertain where to alight. I was imaginatively held by 
my own motion. The blonde fur of my mound did indeed become a bee which 
hovered around a conch shell which I lifted from the desk. Legs apart, a 
hissing sound escaping from my lips, my mound forming an arrow point to the 
long sleekness of my quivering thighs, I cupped the delicate form of the 
conch shell in my hands a few inches below my circling sex, hesitating with 
the whole dull tremor of my torso to alight on the shell tip. In this way, 
making mute love noises to the delicate urn-like thing I sought but refused 
to feed upon, I circled the cabin, sometimes with the shell at arm's length, 
sometimes nested between my firm-nippled breasts, occasionally grazing the 
secret fur between my legs, until, near the cabin door, I turned off most of 
the lights, so that the shadow of my convoluted torso fell softly about the 
cabin walls. 

Then, on my knees, the white wall of my belly thrust forward, my head 
toppling backward, I brought the point of the cone to my face, hovered with 
it, and then took it between the lips of my mouth, greedily, like a child at 
mother's nipple. So complete was the metamorphosis of the conch shell that, 
still sucking the point violently, my whole body became weak with pleasure 
and I toppled sideways onto the cabin floor, where the garland of my excited 
flesh quivered on the dark polished boards. Through the crescent rotundities 
of my female parts I felt my juices rise like a tide in answer to the 
shell's hypnotic influence. My fair blonde hair splashed about the dark 
wood, half-shrouding my strange sexual devotion. I rolled over on my back, 
the shell held like a goblet in slender white arms which seemed to be 
playing an instrument, slobbering on the brittle point in untempered 
passion. At the same time I spread wide my heavy female thighs so that the 
lips of my cunt parted, showing a pale, wet ruby seam of complexity. 

I heard a grunt from where the red-haired captain was sitting, and, rising 
on my elbow, I saw through my blonde hair, which fell in a smooth, golden 
cascade, half-obscuring my vision, that his cock was out on his lap, 
strangely white against the ruddy forest of his short hairs. Slowly, I rose 
to my feet, still holding the conch shell, all the muscles of my slim body 
lustrous in the pale light, and brought my hands to my hips as my golden 
hair once again splashed about my delicately formed shoulderblades. 

No sooner was I on my feet than I realized with vexation that the man was 
impotent. He was gazing down with a drunken look of awe at his own soft, 
white imbecility lying on the nest of red hairs. I realized at once that the 
reason for this man's habitual anger was his knowledge that in spite of his 
desire he was no longer a male. 

My vexation turned to anger. My whole body was crying out to be taken in a 
brutal sexual embrace. I threw myself between his legs in an attempt to 
rouse him, but he sat rigidly in his chair, staring glassily at his 
impotence. Then, with a sudden, muffled curse, he grasped me by the hair of 
my head, and twisted my lithe body backward across his knees so that my head 
fell backward over one arm of the chair and my trembling thighs with their 
furry little diadem were exposed to his avid gaze. At the same time, he 
grasped the conch shell and thrust it brutally between the delicately lush 
cleft of my cunt. I cried out in pain at the shock. The rigid conical form 
was altogether too large for the smooth love-sleeve, but he held my sweating 
body in a firm arc and, with a relentless piston-motion of his forearm, he 
beat me into a low, whimpering pleasure. My belly and flanks danced 
convulsively on his knees, and a warm protesting blood appeared in trickles 
between my love-lips and the hard indented conch shell which was sunk almost 
to its maximum diameter in my vital center. I groaned with pain as he eased 
the pressure in removing the thing which had split me, and then, his huge 
hands grasping me at the hips, my blonde hair forming a pool on the dark 
wood between his feet, he raised me to doting love, soothing the bleeding 
lips and causing the tearing commotion at my loins to subside in a soft 
corrosion. 

He stood up, his mouth buried between the fleshy pillars of my thighs, my 
body in its upside-down position flat against his brass-buttoned jacket, and 
walked with me through a doorway into the small cabin where he slept. Almost 
gently, he laid me between the sheets, slipped out of his own clothes, and 
climbed naked and big as a barrel into the bunk beside me. He wasted no 
time. He inverted me quickly so that my dripping cleft was once again at his 
lips, his head resting on one of my voluptuous thighs, and with a gentle but 
firm thrust of one hand at the back of my smooth head, he forced my face 
against the fleshy orchid that lay between his thighs. I was beyond 
resistance. Gradually, under the insistent caress, strands of sensation 
spread like wildfire through my limbs, while my captor's member, perhaps 
because of the sadistic pleasure which he had lately experienced, perhaps 
because of the proximity of my now doting mouth, rose like a mast between 
his powerful thighs until its caliber, contained in the crocus of my hands, 
was such that I could resist it no longer. With a sinuous movement of my 
young torso, I reversed my position and my sex sought his. With a strangled 
cry of triumph he mounted me, thrusting his rampant member between the 
ermine-trimmed lips of my cleft, riding on my pneumatic breasts with his 
broad wirehaired chest, and mouthing doting obscenities in the shadow of my 
abandoned neck. 

I had never before experienced such overpowering strength in a male, and 
soon every tremulous petal of me opened as though under the rays of ripening 
sun to suck in the sweet fluid that in the height of his terrible passion 
gushed forth with the thin pressure of steam. I thought that night that he 
would never allow me to sleep. Five times he mounted me, and five times my 
white body spread under him like soft wax, eager to expose the softest and 
the most secret parts of itself to the fibrous front which nuzzled it. At 
last, his arm coiled between my slippery buttocks, his mouth at my breast, 
and his broad hand at the small of my back, he fell into a deep sleep of 
contentment. 

I lay for a while in the darkness, uneasy under the oppressive weight of his 
limbs, wondering whether or not I would be able to persuade him to allow me 
to land at Singapore, and then, weak from the night's love. I too fell 
asleep. 

I was alone when I awoke. He had evidently gone on duty. I stretched and 
yawned and slid from the bunk onto the floor. I was amused to find that I 
was still wearing both the garter belt and the black-silk stockings. The 
garter belt was torn and it hung like a pretty kerchief on the gleaming 
flesh of my belly. The stockings were badly laddered, like those of a chorus 
girl in a cheap vaudeville. There were traces of blood on my thighs but I 
experienced no pain in moving. I laughed at myself, dabbed my thighs with a 
sponge and walked naked into the main cabin. 

At that moment there was a discreet knock on the door and a seaman, bearing 
breakfast on a tray, entered. He had reached the centre of the cabin before 
he noticed me. At the sight of me, he stopped dead, his jaw dropping in 
surprise. 

I sized him up quickly. He couldn't have been more than nineteen and he had 
probably never been alone with a naked woman. If I could make a friend of 
him, he might prove useful, might, even if my lover of the previous night 
decided against it, smuggle me ashore. 

"Bring it in next door," I said crisply, and walked, with the slow swing of 
my graceful buttocks toward him, back into the cabin from which I had just 
come. 

I sat down on the bunk with my shapely legs crossed. 

A moment later, pale and hesitant, he followed me in. 

"Where is the Captain?" I asked softly. "In the chartroom, mum." He held the 
tray in front of him, his eyes almost popping from their sockets. "How long 
will he be there?" 

"Said for me to tell you he'd be to see you in an hour or so, mum." 

I laughed softly. "Put the tray down," I said, "And come here." 

After a moment's hesitation he did so, but he stood about a yard away. 
"Closer," I said. He edged forward a few inches. "Don't be afraid," I said. 
"What's your name?" 

"Tom," he said. 

"Mine's Helen. Come closer and put your hand on my thigh." 

Wide-eyed, his hand quivering, he did so. 

"Stroke it for me," I whispered. 

His hand, which had lain there like lead, stirred slightly, and soon his 
fingers became more sure of themselves and traced delicate patterns along 
the sloping inside surface of my thigh. But he remained afraid and caressed 
my creamy skin at arm's length. 

The bunk was a high one. When I sat upright, my navel was on a level with 
his eyes. I opened my thighs like a book. 

"Come close to me," I said in a whisper. 

He approached, fascinated. When he was close enough, I took his young boy's 
head close to my soft belly and pressed it there, running my slim fingers 
through his tousled hair. 

"Put your arms round me and press me close," I whispered sensually. 

I felt his hands move slowly round my buttocks and soon, stifling sobs, he 
was burying his face in my belly. I went on caressing his head in a silence 
occasionally broken by a sob. An infinite tenderness existed in my veins. 

"Come up onto the bunk with me," I said in a tone of quiet command. He did 
so without hesitation. I slipped my hand on his bare skin under his rough 
seaman's jersey and brought his lips against my left breast. 

"Suck my breast," I whispered. 

His soft young lips closed round my nipple and the small exciting tug sent 
quivers of excitement down along the rise of my belly to the seat of my 
body's government. Patiently, I caressed his back, and then, drawing his 
legs sideways toward me, I ran my fingers lightly over the bulge in his 
trousers. 

"Take them off," I whispered. 

Hastily he thrust his trousers away from him, down to his calves. He was 
young and excited; his belly was almost innocent of hair. 

The boy flung himself forward to bury himself deep within my belly before, 
in his first tense and vital excitement, his young seed out of all control 
coursed through his shuddering stem. No movement, no oscillation was 
necessary to set fire to his vital reservoir. He came in his first stroke as 
my voracious love lips sucked him to the whirlpool of my female desire 
which, excited by this slimmest of lovers, caused the vise of my velvet 
thighs to contain him close till every youthful shudder had subsided. 

I did not try to restrain him. He wished to be away from me. He was afraid. 
And I knew he would return. He would love me as long as I required his 
devotion. 

"We'll make Singapore tomorrow morning," the Captain said, over dinner. 

I looked at him closely, trying to read what was in his mind, but he evaded 
my glance. I had a definite impression that he would be unwilling to set me 
at liberty in Singapore. He had promised to do so by this time, but he 
avoided the subject as much as possible. 

Captain O'Reilly had changed. He was no longer the bad-tempered bully who 
had confronted me that first time. He was now almost dog-like in his 
devotion. He would have married me-he said a hundred times-if he had not 
already been married, with children my own age. I believe he would have. 
That is to say, if I had agreed to such a preposterous match. O'Reilly was 
fifty-five and a poor man, king it is true when his ship was at sea, but 
just another anonymous little sea captain the moment his ship made port. As 
it was, he wanted me to be his mistress. The ship was far from home waters. 
It's home port was Liverpool in England. He could safely keep me aboard for 
at least eighteen months. He hinted at this so often that I began to suspect 
he had no intention of setting me free and I congratulated myself on the 
secret love-pact I had made with he the callow youth who acted as his 
steward. Tom and promised to aid me to slip ashore at Singapore even if the 
Captain forbade it. I had cultivated him for the past week, giving myself to 
him each morning after the Captain had gone on deck, and he was now madly in 
love with me. I think he would have killed O'Reilly had I demanded it of 
him. 

"You will let me leave the ship?" 

"It may be difficult, Helen," he said evasively. "The Customs are sticky, 
you know. I'll have to look over the he of the land once we get there." 

"I'm sure you'll manage," I said gently. 

"Oh, sure, sure!" he said hastily. "Just give me a few days after we get 
there." 

I put my hand on his across the table. 

"You know I'm in no hurry to leave you, John. It's just that I must feel 
free," 

"Of course," he said. "Don't worry." 

I was not worried. I had no intention of relying on him. As soon as he had 
gone ashore, I intended to make an attempt to land on my own. Or rather, 
with the help of Tom. O'Reilly wouldn't dare to lock me up. 

He would be afraid to make me suspicious. So, the night before we came to 
Singapore, I invited him to carry me to the bunk. 

"Pretend this is our first night, John," I said huskily. 

O'Reilly was ashore. The dock was crowded with Chinese coolies and 
Englishmen in uniform. From somewhere came the nervous sputter of a 
pneumatic drill. The dockyard noises mingled with the hoarse Oriental shouts 
of the laborers, cranes turned, hawsers tightened, tug-whistles blew. The 
docks were a kaleidoscope of colour, blue, red, green, yellow, and above 
this cauldron of commerce the sun struck down from an unbroken azure-blue 
sky. 

Singapore! 

Even the smells were different. As Tom dressed me in his clothes, I could 
hardly contain my impatience. Then he cut off the luscious blonde coils of 
my wonderful hair. I looked in the mirror. It was the face of a boy, albeit 
a pretty one. 

"Wear the cap," he said eagerly. 

I placed it on my head. The fine gold spun appearance of my clipped hair was 
thus shrouded. 

"And my papers. They'll get you past the policeman at the gate. Don't 
forget, Helen, somehow or other you must get them back to me. O'Reilly'll 
skin me alive if he finds out." 

"Don't worry, Tom, I'll send them back with someone and he'll leave word 
with you where you can meet me." 

"Promise?" 

"I promise." I kissed him on the lips. 

"I'll die if you don't!" 

I put the papers in the jacket pocket. 

"I'm going now," I said. "Thanks for the money." 

He had given me five pounds, which was all he had. 

Embracing him for the last time, I slipped onto the deserted deck, walked 
quickly down the gangplank, and threaded my way between men and machinery 
toward the dockyard gate. Overhead, the giant arms of cranes swivelled with 
bales of merchandise. I hesitated to allow a trolley to pass. I intended to 
send back the papers but I had no intention of seeing Tom again. He was far 
too sentimental-had he not buried his face in the cut locks of my hair and 
prayed to me that he should be allowed to keep them?-even I could not have 
changed him. 

The policeman glanced casually at my papers and allowed me to pass outside 
into the street. I had walked about twenty yards when I heard him call me 
back. Perhaps something in my walk had made him suspicious. I froze 
momentarily, and then, making up my mind in a flash, I dashed headlong for 
the nearest corner. I heard his shout and then the noise of his footsteps in 
pursuit. I turned the corner well ahead of him and found myself in an almost 
deserted side street. I cursed my luck. I had hoped for a main thoroughfare, 
for crowds into which I might disappear. I ran on. Fortunately, I was 
fleet-footed. My thighs flashed under the rough seaman's trousers. He was 
still about twenty yards behind when I turned the next corner. He was 
blowing a whistle now. I darted across the road toward a house which stood 
in its own grounds, almost running right into a rickshaw which moved swiftly 
across my path. I tore open the gate, slammed it behind me and ran to hide 
in the bushes. I heard the footsteps of my pursuer turn the corner and come 
to a halt. He walked backward and forward in indecision. Cautiously, I crept 
through the bushes, trembling at every crackling twig, toward the low 
pagoda-like villa. In this way I circled the house. 

There was no one on the veranda, which gave onto the lawn. I moved quickly 
across open space and slipped through the open French windows into a lounge 
furnished with all the splendors of the Orient. Silk-damask, jade, ebonies 
and ivories, rich Chinese rugs, an atmosphere laden with the heavy-sweet 
smell of incense which burned in a censer-I had not time to take it all in 
before I heard the sound of approaching voices speaking some Oriental 
tongue. I crossed the room in one bound and concealed myself behind some 
curtains of silk. 

 CHAPTER SIX 

We had been camped for two days. A tall Arab came during the day with 
another man. He made me stand naked while the other man examined me, 
pinching my plump buttocks, feeling the posture of my hips, inspecting my 
teeth. Evidently I am to be sold. 

The idea excites me. Not indifference, not horror, but positively and 
corruptively almost a feeling of lust. Here is a denial of personality which 
I have been at such pains to extinguish by my own efforts. Here is a 
positive and shattering assertion that I am coincident with the pleasure 
that is to be had between my thighs or at the nipples of my firm breasts. My 
wildest dreams then are become for these men who handle me as a 
matter-of-fact. Dualism is extinguished, mind obliterated by the refusal of 
these men to notice its existence. I am annihilated. There remains only this 
dusky front, the mould of this flank, the tilt of these breasts, the moist 
softness of this cleft below the strong jut of the mound. They have a life 
of their own and in their alluvial silts I lust to submerge myself. And 
these strange men are my confederates. For the first time in my life, 
without hypocrisy, without prevarication, I am valued for what I am, woman, 
the roots of sex and pleasure. I am purged of all poisons, of civilization. 

From my hiding place behind the curtain I saw the two Chinese enter the room 
and sit cross-legged on cushions on the floor. A moment later a young 
Chinese girl entered bearing a tray with tea on it. She curtsied and placed 
it between the men. She was a doll-like fragile creature dressed in heavily 
embroidered silk, a tunic and black-silk trousers. She wore boat-shaped 
little slippers on her naked yellow feet. Having placed the tray in 
position, she curtsied for a second time and glided silently from the room. 
The two men talked Chinese. Behind the curtain I leaned back well out of 
sight. 

About a quarter of an hour later, one of the men clapped his hands. The same 
young Chinese girl entered and removed the tray. Then two fat little men, in 
dragon-patterned silk robes, came in carrying musical instruments. After 
bowing politely, they sat well back in one corner, and began to play some 
kind of weird and apparently disordered melody. 

One of the two spectators rose then and closed the French windows and over 
them the heavy damask curtains. In the semi-darkness he crossed the room and 
struck one resounding blow on a brass gong. Then he rejoined the other man 
in a cross-legged position. 

At that moment a tinkle of little bells came to me at the other side of the 
curtain. It sounded like the little jostling bells one sometimes finds on a 
pony-harness. I widened the slit in the curtain to get a better view of what 
was passing in the room. A beam of green light from one side of the room 
picked out the smooth and heavily bedecked body of the young Balinese dancer 
whose sudden knee-movements-for her knees were encrusted with small 
bells-had caused the tinkling sound which had caused me to look. Every 
movement of her green-tinged body was oblique, as though her graceful limbs 
were composed of mechanical jade. She wore a tall intricately worked 
head-dress, which appeared to represent in a formalized way some personage 
in a nest of snakes. The snake-like impression was intensified by the cool 
angular thrusts of her arms and by the oiled rigidity of her long tapering 
hands. The cage of her pelvis seemed to be encrusted with jewels which in 
the strange light appeared to be embedded in the beautiful orbs of her 
buttocks, and, in the centre of the pale green flesh of her soft twitching 
abdomen a ruby sparkled, a magic navel of fire which reflected the light in 
all its surfaces, sending needles of colour in all directions. Below the 
navel, the shadow of her mound was scarcely visible under the thin 
gold-metallic leaves which seemed to sprout amongst her slow-moving short 
hairs. Her breasts were entirely naked but tipped each with some jewel which 
sparkled faintly in the dance. Her neck supported a high collar of silver 
which lent rigidity to the poise of her head, the head of a statue, 
kohl-eyed, and expressionless as that of an eastern goddess. 

Under my startled eyes the strange dance progressed, continued rather, for 
it did not appear to have either a beginning or an end, being a series of 
gestures, exotic, sensual and mechanical at the same time, and not a dance 
in our western sense. As the girl danced, I realized that her apparent 
height was deceptive. She was in fact extremely small, like a Chinese woman, 
and looked tall and stately merely because of the head-dress, the exotic 
harness, and the lighting effects. She looked almost like a child or a doll, 
and her skin where it was visible had the sheen of pale green porcelain. Her 
hemispherical breasts were no bigger than apples and bejewelled as they 
were, they glowed ambiguously with a fragile duck-egg blue. The faces of the 
men who sat cross-legged on the cushions were likewise expressionless. I was 
fascinated by the incense-laden formality of the spectacle. 

Suddenly, as inconsequentially as it had begun, the music ceased. The girl 
stood rigid, without movement, her arms strangely crooked like the handles 
of an ornate vessel, her kohl-black eyes flickering and occult. 

The fat little musicians got up and left the room. 

One of the spectators bowed to the other, who returned his bow, and with his 
hands in the loose silk sleeves of his kimono, he followed the musicians 
out. 

The man who remained said something in Chinese to the dancer. She bowed and 
sat down on the edge of a divan. Her face was devoid of expression. He 
crossed the room, did something with the light switches, and the beam 
changed the direction of its thrust so that the divan and the glimmering 
trappings of the dancer were flooded in a pool of green. Then he returned 
and sat down beside her. From my place of concealment I had a direct view of 
them. 

They sat close on the divan, and, as he drew her toward him, the man's hand 
caressed the smooth, naked slice of thigh which was now exposed to him. 
Then, with one hand behind her shoulders, he raised her head close to his 
own and kissed her on the lips. Their movements were slow and suggestive. He 
was breathing heavily. Suddenly he said something which I couldn't 
understand, at the same time relaxing his grip. The young girl slithered out 
of his grasp and began to remove her exotic trappings. First she removed the 
head-dress, her slender arms pushing it upward from her short blue-black 
hair. This had the effect of making her skillfully shaded eyes as large as 
saucers in which the strange liquids of fear and sensuality fought for 
control. Then, without a word, she stripped the crust of bejewelled harness 
from her slim, pale yellow body and cast them in a glittering heap on the 
floor, until she stood stark naked, as palely and supremely beautiful as a 
lily, her small, silky mound like a soft paintbrush, wettened with ink. 

For a moment he was content to admire her nudity and made no attempt to move 
toward her. She, meanwhile, stood with lowered glance, a delicate slave 
awaiting his pleasure. Then he reached forward to put his hands on her hips 
and drew her small body toward him. A slight reluctance caused a tremor to 
pass through her silken flesh before, abruptly, it swayed forward in 
complete subjection toward his lips. He kissed her navel, now devoid of its 
ruby, almost religiously, his hands cupped over her small tense buttocks 
whose substance in the strange light quivered like pale-green blancmange. 
Then his hands, caressing her sides and flanks, seemed to coax his own body 
off the divan. He was still wearing his kimono which reached the floor 
around him like a tent. And so it turned out to be, for, tastelessly, his 
hands on her temples now, he forced her head and body downward until she sat 
cross-legged at his feet, and, raising his kimono at the front, he brought 
it down over and shrouded her head and shoulders until she had disappeared 
entirely beneath its folds. They remained in this position for some time, 
and then gradually he raised her under his cloak so that her nude flesh must 
have been splashed against his front, while his hands the kimono between 
them and her flesh-sought the smooth outline of her buttocks and her little 
yellow heels dangled just in sight below the hem of his kimono. In this 
position she rose and fell against him passionately, her toes flexed and 
sometimes finding the floor to press herself forward and upward again 
against the unseen genitals of the man. 

Soon they fell sideways onto the couch and the man's powerful lower limbs, 
naked and glistening in the green light, kicked amongst hers as his buttocks 
tightened to the orgasm. 

They lay still. 

A moment later he had divested himself of his kimono and was lying naked 
beside her. Already, I felt the familiar constriction at my throat, the 
subterranean tremor in the secrecy of my womb, and, had I not been afraid of 
his anger, I would have taken off my own clothes and offered myself to his 
embrace. As it was, I could scarcely restrain myself for he had begun again 
to make love to her, only this time in an unfamiliar way. She was lying on 
her belly in front of him and his hands pulled her buttocks apart, exposing 
the soft, downy crevice and the little amulet of illicit love, round and 
gathered as a rosebud. At that moment, I could not help comparing him to 
some homed and mythical creature, a demi-god with a nymph, in a temple of 
initiation. He was kneeling behind her, between her legs. Cautiously, as one 
might thread a needle, he put his point to her, testing the elasticity of 
her nether love lips with small, almost doting hip-pressures. Suddenly, he 
seemed to make up his mind, like a skillful surgeon who has decided how to 
make his incision, and, driving his knees into the softness of the divan, he 
penetrated her buttocks with the force of a battering ram. The girl cried 
out in pain but he held her. His forearm was a bar of iron at her straining 
shoulders. One hand held her by the tuft of hair at the scruff of her neck; 
the other was under her belly, pressing her rump upward toward him, and his 
legs, like powerful creepers, grafted themselves to hers as he pinioned her 
helplessly to meet his thrust. 

At first the girl lay unresisting like a crushed flower under the flat bow 
of his front, but gradually, as the exploring member moved more easily at 
her shy ventricle, her softened buttocks mushroomed slowly upward toward 
their split to imprison what was within. In a subtle collusion of movement 
they knelt, the man behind and against the girl who drooped frailly forward 
like a broken flower stem so that her glistening hair fell in a blue veil 
over her eyes. They came to a climax simultaneously, she, spiked deeply, 
sitting on his knee at the edge of the divan, her small oval hips tilted 
upward, and her lips, like soft red petals at his mouth, uttered a low moan 
of pleasure. 

Almost immediately, he stood up, pressed a button, and the normal electric 
light came into play. 

He said something to the girl, who rose slowly to a standing position and 
raised her slender arms high above her head so that the flesh glimmered 
whitely under the thin wisp of blue-black hair of her armpits. Her buttocks 
were tight and her toes were tensed in the thick pile of the carpet. Her 
breasts and hips looked as though they were moulded of pale yellow 
porcelain, the former crowned by the buds of delicate violets. He nodded, 
crossed the floor to where the girl stood rigid in a quivering curve from 
her heels to her tilted breasts to her fingertips, and, without haste, ran 
the palm of his hand over the downy contour of her back and buttocks. 

He seemed to wish to prolong his orgy indefinitely, to be unwilling to have 
the beautiful creature go out of his sight. He pinched and patted her with 
the fingers of a connoisseur. All the time she stood like a statue and I 
could hear him breathing heavily. 

Suddenly, and quite viciously, he slapped her across the face with his open 
hand, so that she fell again across the divan. I think she must have fainted 
momentarily. When she came out of her faint she began to cry, low convulsive 
sobs which caused her little breasts to rise and fall tremulously. He raised 
her legs onto her stomach, opened her thighs like a bible and lowered his 
muscly front into the soft and shadowy cleft. The girl, stimulated by the 
contact, moaned and shuddered with pleasure, a pleasure which seemed all the 
more desperate and complete for the exaggerated sensitivity of her lacerated 
flesh. Shortly afterward, it was over. He threw her a pale-blue kimono. She 
put it on, collected the pieces of her dancing costume, and crept from the 
room in a bowing posture. 

The man, seemingly abstracted now, put on his own kimono, lit a long and 
tapering cigarette and clapped his hands. The servant who appeared silently 
opened the curtains, flooding the room with daylight. 

I was not able to leave my hiding place until evening. I was afraid of my 
unknowing host's sexual passion. On the contrary, if my position in 
Singapore had not been so insecure I would willingly have given myself to 
him. But at that moment I was in need of a protector and not a lover, 
although I had no doubt that one man would insist on fulfilling both 
functions. 

As soon as the room was deserted I had my first opportunity since leaving 
the ship to look at myself in the mirror. Straightaway, I removed the cap 
and ruffled my blonde hair. It had a windswept appearance which, although I 
was unaware of it, was quite fashionable among eastern women of that time. 
For myself, unconscious as yet of all fashions-in Australia clothes are worn 
to hide one's shame and not to render the female body more provocative-I was 
quite pleased with its appearance. But my clothes were impossible. Already I 
had conceived a plan. If I could find some suitable clothes I would not be 
afraid to be found "in possession" of the room when the owner returned. By a 
stroke of good fortune the matter was soon settled. I found an intricately 
worked kimono of brocaded yellow silk in a cabinet. Hastily, I divested 
myself of my seaman's gross attire, glanced at the luscious maturity of my 
creamy flesh, and slipped into the cool yellow silk. Then, rolling the 
clothes I had taken off into a bundle, I went through the French windows and 
threw it into the centre of a clump of bushes. The moment I had done so it 
occurred to me that I had forgotten about the young seaman's papers. They 
had been in one of the pockets. And now, since the undergrowth was so dense, 
they were irrevocably lost to me. But I had little time for the luxuries of 
conscience. Without delay I returned to the room and made myself comfortable 
on one of the divans. 

About an hour later, a servant entered bearing a tray of refreshments. He 
had laid it down on a table before he became aware of my presence. His face 
remained impassive when he saw me. He hesitated for a moment and then, as 
though nothing was out of order, he left the room with small quick steps. I 
heard excited conversation at the other side of the door, high-pitched 
staccato Chinese voices. I got up from the divan and helped myself to a 
drink. I had decided that I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a 
lamb, although I was tolerably certain that my host, obviously a man of 
culture, would be mere imaginative than that in his treatment of me. 

I moved over to a chair by the window to drink what I had poured myself and 
I had no sooner installed myself there than the door opened and this prince 
of sensualists came graciously across the room toward me. 

He stood a few yards off, bowed, and said in faultless English: 

"You wished to see me, madam?" 

"I need your help, sir," I said. 

"It will be a pleasure," he replied at once. "But first, my dear lady, 
hadn't you better explain to me how you came to be in my house, unknown to 
me, and wearing, if I am not mistaken, a garment which belongs to me?" 

"I came in by the window," I said, "And as I had no clothes I put this on." 

"I see," he said ironically, but never for a moment losing his affable tone. 
"Like a goddess you arrived naked at my window, entered, and clothed 
yourself. Now all is explained." 

"I could hardly have presented myself to you without clothes," I said with 
intended finality. 

"Assuredly not," he agreed most politely. "A poor mortal such as I could not 
expect ... ah, if it were only possible! But then, like my great master, 
Confucius, I am cursed by a restless and enquiring spirit. A fair goddess, 
in my house, in my robe...." 

"If you wish to have it back," I said with hauteur, and I began to take it 
off. 

"Please, dear lady!" he said, raising a hand in protest, "it is yours. You 
are more than welcome to everything that is in my house. Forgive my 
enquiring spirit! In some circumstances it is not the least of my virtues." 

I smiled at him. 

"A moment," he said, gesturing for me to sit down. He clapped his hands. A 
servant appeared and my host gave an order in Chinese. 

"You will take tea, madam?" 

I nodded. He beckoned to the servant who left the room. When he had gone my 
host sat down opposite me and said: 

"And now perhaps you will be good enough to explain why you chose my house 
rather than another's and how you came to be in such an embarrassing 
position-I mean it is highly unusual for an English lady to be out and about 
Singapore without clothes...." 

"It was my husband," I lied. 

"You may depend upon my discretion, madam." 

"My husband is a Commander in the British Navy," I said. 

"So?" 

"I told him I was going to leave him" 

"Ah!" 

"He took away my clothes and locked me in my hotel room." 

"How ungallant of him!" 

"I found an old raincoat." 

"That was fortunate." 

"I managed to get away by the fire-escape." 

"You are a resourceful woman!" 

"But an agent of my husband saw me and followed me. I ran and he chased me, 
but I managed to turn a corner and get out of sight. The road was deserted. 
I don't know what I was thinking about but I felt that if I could get rid of 
the raincoat ... you understand?" 

"So you took it off," he said helpfully. 

"I had forgotten I was naked underneath," I went on desperately. 

"A delicious oversight!" he smiled, "And so?" 

"Your gate was open. I slipped into your garden and hid among the bushes but 
after a while I got cold so I came inside." 

Et voila!" he said. "And now there is no longer a mystery." 

Although he acted as though he had believed my story I had the unaccountable 
feeling that he was only pretending to do so, but I didn't really care. I 
felt sure he wouldn't send for the police. 

"And now, madame, you do not wish to return to your husband?" 

"Never!" 

"And you wish me to help you? I count myself fortunate!" 

"If only you would!" 

"Rest assured I shall be your humble servant in this matter. You have only 
to command. And now,"-for the servant had reappeared with a tray-"let us 
take tea." 

My host informed me that he was a silk merchant, was Chinese, and that he 
had an everlasting respect for the British Navy. "The British cruiser," he 
said, "it is the vicar of your great Empire. It answers the lies and 
iniquitous ambitions of your subject-savages with precision and relentless 
justice. A broadside ... ha! Much more effective than words. Yes," he 
concluded, "I have the greatest respect." 

"I hope that doesn't mean for my husband!" 

He made a gesture. "There are ridiculous men everywhere," he said. "I am 
sure you had every provocation to leave your husband." 

I thanked him. 

"No," he said after a moment, "I bring up the subject because I am expecting 
a young friend of mine shortly. He too is an English Naval Officer, a 
Lieutenant in the Fleet Air Arm, perhaps you know him. His name is Hawkes." 

"I don't know him but I'd rather not meet him," I said quickly. 

He nodded understandingly. 

"In that case," he said, "I shall put one of the upstairs rooms at your 
disposal. If you require anything you have only to ask." 

I thanked him again and asked him not to mention me to Lieutenant Hawkes. 

"Of course not! My dear lady, you can trust me implicitly!" 

He called a servant who conducted me to my new quarters. 

My room, like the one I had left downstairs, was luxuriously furnished with 
carpets, silks and brocades. There I found everything I required, toilet 
requisites, a private bathroom, and an endless array of Chinese clothes. I 
bathed carefully and made myself comfortable. 

About nine in the evening a servant knocked and entered with dinner: caviar, 
chicken, and assorted crystallized fruits. I ate and relaxed with a 
cigarette and the local English paper which he brought along with the tray. 

It was after eleven when my host appeared. He knocked quietly and entered. 

"Mr. Hawkes is gone," he said immediately. "I wondered whether you wished to 
tell me what it is you want me to do for you tonight or whether you wished 
to sleep now and talk about it tomorrow." 

I threw the paper aside. I had been reading of how the British Navy was 
collaborating with the local Customs in an attempt to put down opium 
smuggling which, it was said, had increased to alarming proportions. 

"You were reading?" he said politely. "Yes, I was reading about the opium 
smuggling," I said. 

"Ah yes," he said after a moment's hesitation. "It is an evil thing. Young 
Mr. Hawkes is at present engaged in trying to track down the criminals." 

"Why is it so serious?" I said. "Why shouldn't people smoke opium if they 
want to?" 

"Ha!" exclaimed my host. "It is interesting to hear a westerner speak like 
that. The western vice is alcohol. You know it and therefore you are not 
afraid of it. We Chinese sometimes wonder what all the fuss is about." 

"It's people like your Mr. Hawkes who make the world such a dreary place to 
live in." 

"Ah yes, poor Hawkes! I have often thought so. But he is such an honorable 
young man." 

"Why don't you sit down?" I said to him. 

"If you are sure you don't wish to sleep...." 

"I'm not at all tired," I said. 

"That is surprising after all you have been through today!" 

"On the contrary, thanks to you, I feel so relieved!" 

"It is a pleasure to help you. I begin to see, I think, that an English 
Naval Commander is not the type of husband who can hold a woman like you." 

I laughed. "He's a fool!" I said. 

"When it comes to women, is it not true that all men are fools?" my host 
said gallantly. 

"You're not!" I said emphatically. 

"Ah, my dear lady, that is very flattering, but on such a short acquaintance 
I don't see how you can possibly judge!" 

I laughed. 

"You see," he continued, "you don't know I am not a fool." 

"But I do," I said, and then I heard myself saying, "because, you see, I 
have a confession to make." 

"A confession?" 

I nodded. It was too late to back out now. "It is nothing that is not 
forgiven as soon as it is confessed," he said charmingly, "of that I am 
quite sure." 

"Don't be so sure," I said seriously. 

"Well, you must tell me now, certainly," he said, laughing. 

"I watched you this afternoon." 

"This afternoon?" A shadow passed across his face. 

"In the room downstairs with the girl, the dancer." 

"You were there even then?" 

"Behind the curtains," I confessed. 

He hesitated. It was difficult to read the play of conflicting emotions on 
his face. He said at last: 

"I did not realise of course that I was performing ... I am alarmed ... 
could not have known ... I trust you were not too deeply shocked by my 
brutality ... a way we have in the east, dear lady ... another culture ... a 
different view of such things. We are, perhaps, less squeamish, is that the 
word?" 

"That," I said, "is how I am sure you are not a fool." 

"You approved!" 

"I was jealous." 

"Jealous!" 

"Why not?" I said. "Do you think my husband makes love with so much 
imagination?" 

"Would you want him to?" 

"He would be incapable of it!" 

"Our eastern manners please you?" 

"What I've seen of them." 

"You are an amazing woman," he said slowly. "If I might be of service to you 
in that way...." 

I looked at him. He was smiling inscrutably. But I felt his desire and my 
whole body reacted to it. 

"I can think of nothing I'd like more," I said as he took me into his arms. 

Slowly, with an immense sense of fulfilment, I sank back on the cushions, 
drawing his small, hard body on top of me. I felt the smooth skin of his 
face and his hot breath at my neck. Even through two thicknesses of silk I 
could feel the intense heat of his loins closely insistent next to my own. 
His soft lips burst suddenly open on mine and his tongue, unsheathing 
itself, began to explore the sensitive interior of my mouth. His skilful 
hands meanwhile sought my satin skin beneath the kimono and he stroked me 
softly, bringing the mysterious current to my loins by the slow caress of 
his fingertips. A dark pencil of lust seemed to move down from my brain to 
the quivering tips of my breasts and my whole singing body cried out to be 
taken. I moaned softly. "Like this afternoon," I said. Without waiting for 
him to reply, I pulled him from the divan, dropped to his feet as the dancer 
had, and naked, for I had thrown off my kimono, I insinuated myself under 
the hem of his garment. As I had suspected, he was quite naked beneath it, 
and as soon as the kimono swung over me like a tent, the air, hot from his 
male body, filled my nostrils, causing my head to move upward as though 
magnetized between the powerful muscles of his thighs. He stood there, out 
of my sight, his strong legs astride and his hips tilting forward and 
slightly upward and soon, in the utter darkness, I felt the rising violence 
of his passion. Above my trimming lips, his belly quivered against my 
forehead, and, a moment later, he moved backward, guiding me with him, until 
he was sitting at the divan and I, still under the strange night of his 
kimono, my head locked between broad and fleshy walls, was his handmaiden, 
kneeling at his feet. 

No sooner did I feel the rise against my doting lips than he brought me out 
into the light of the room again, stripped himself naked and threw himself 
on top of me on the divan. His hardness at once broke through the cleft of 
hair which shrouded the soft and singing weal. Mad with passion for him, I 
bucked my tremulous front against him to bring about the inundation. It 
followed almost immediately while he was prising my knees further apart with 
his hands. But he did not stop there. He got onto his knees and, grasping me 
by the calves, drew my thighs over his head until his face was buried in my 
hairy furrow and his tongue struck deep into my swimming sex. 

We remained in that position for some time, his mouth exploring my female 
intricacies and his hands, like starfish, cradling the mellow globes of my 
buttocks, pressing them toward him to aid the penetration. Then his mouth 
quitted its task and there existed a lecherous rudder between my excited 
buttocks searching for the little stud-like amethyst between them. 
Meanwhile, his fingers caressed toward that new centre and I felt the tips 
of them play delicately with the mastic ring through which, with a gust of 
anticipation, I realized his courage would soon pass. 

As his fingertips played there, I clenched and unclenched the muscles which 
caused to dilate and contract in lust. Noticing my movement, he thrust his 
thumb into me quite brutally. For a moment I lay still, feeling without 
moving the presence of the flesh in my flesh. A prickling prescience 
overtook me. Then, cautiously, by dilating and contracting again, I began to 
feel into the oscillation. 

My thighs were rigid. When he saw my reaction he removed his thumb and 
turned me over on my trembling belly. I closed my eyes into the cushions. 
Everything was silent. The desire for the new pain which would bring the 
terrible pleasure into my body made me feel weak, tensionless, dragged 
downward from the roots, like a flag drooping in a windless atmosphere. Once 
again I felt his fingers examining the orifice, then, gently, he pulled my 
sweating buttocks apart and laid his smoothness on the puckered indentation. 

I held my breath. One of his hands passed under the warm curve of my belly, 
his middle finger finding my cleat. His other hand grasped me by the hair at 
the back of my neck and his forearm bore heavily down on my tense shoulder 
muscles. By moving my body slightly I realized that I was now pinioned 
helplessly before his lust. There was no way of escape. Indeed, I wanted to 
escape and give myself at the same time. Now I was able to understand the 
presence of the elements of fear and desire in the eyes of the Chinese 
concubine. I had no further time to think. Suddenly, with the force of a 
ramrod, the cylinder burst into me and buried itself up to the hilt in my 
quivering buttocks. I cried out in pain and made a desperate attempt to buck 
him off, but by that time his legs had closed in relentlessly like octopus' 
tentacles at my calves and his hand tightened its grip at the scruff of my 
neck and soon, in spite of my whimpering resistance, his rod sheathed and 
unsheathed itself inexorably like a radiant coal at my tender flesh. 

Gradually, I accepted the pain. It lost its tearing quality. And soon, 
without consciously attempting to offer compliance, I felt my buttocks rise 
and fall like bobbing corks against his moving front. It was no longer 
painful. This illicit part of me was now as voracious as my mouth had been. 
I wanted him to sink deeper to accomplish his primal movement in the darker 
recesses of my abdomen. When he finally did so, I was beside myself with 
desire. Every muscle, every tissue of my body was crying out for punishment. 

I thrust my arms with hands clasped above my head where I lay, inviting him 
to hurt me. He did not hesitate, did not caress first as he did with the 
Chinese girl. My body was rigid, locked, as it were, by tendons which 
radiated to the extremities of my limbs from the anchor of my sex. My 
muscles were hard and flexed. All my female softness were a bank of flowers 
awaiting fertilization. I cried out, not knowing whether it was for pain or 
joy, and, before I had time to protest or to resubmit myself, I felt myself 
turned over roughly and a sudden searing sensation struck my belly. 

At that moment, he sat himself at me firmly, his body a strong wall of 
muscle and heat, and his male organ struck again, driving deep to my roots. 
We reached our final orgasm within a split second of one another, and, as I 
felt the rigid arc of his body thrust downward for the last time, all the 
pains and the exquisite pleasure of my ravishment made me utterly delirious. 
I cried out like a Turk, arched my body in a supple bend, and collapsed 
almost unconscious under the foreign weight. But soon his lips were at mine 
again and my tears of pain were stifled against his neck and shoulders as 
his skilful fingers, playing at my battle scars, induced a tingling pleasure 
which passed through my prostrate frame in waves of contented shudders. I 
took one of his thighs between mine and squeezed it. My senses swam and I 
fainted. 

"This, my dear Helen, is Mr. Hawkes, whom I have already spoken to you 
about." 

Lieutenant Hawkes, a tall young man in his late twenties, was in civilian 
clothes. He shook hands in a formal way with a slight bow. 

"I have told my guest in what high esteem I hold the British Navy," said my 
host with a smile. 

"Oh yes?" Hawkes said vaguely. I felt that in spite of his obvious coolness 
toward me, young Mr. Hawkes was more interested in me than he would have 
admitted. 

A week had passed since I first entered the house and during that time I had 
lived in the midst of a luxury which was almost incredible. Every demand had 
been satisfied. The presence of Lieutenant Hawkes was the climax, and indeed 
heralded the end of my delightful stay. It was the opinion of my host that I 
would not be safe until I was out of Singapore, safe that is from the agents 
of my "husband," for I had never gone back on my original story. To this 
end, Lieutenant Hawkes, who had just been granted two weeks' leave from his 
arduous duties with the Fleet Air Arm, had been prevailed upon by his rich 
friend to fly me in a private airplane beyond the reach of the man who was 
supposed to be looking for me. Or so anyway I thought at the time-but more 
of this later. 

This evening we were to have dinner together so that the young man and 
myself could get to know one another and arrange the details of the flight. 
Beneath my outward calm I was slightly nervous. Hawkes, after all, would 
know most of the English officers in Singapore and he might suspect that my 
story was a mere fabrication. At dinner, therefore, while playing with the 
long crystal stem of my wine glass, I took the risk of putting the question 
to him: 

"You don't know my husband by any chance, Mr. Hawkes?" 

"Your husband?" He was smiling with an air of amused surprise. 

"Commander X!" said my host sharply to his young friend, and I had the 
impression that his tone of voice intended to quell the young man's high 
spirits. 

It certainly had that effect, because Hawkes blushed and stammered: "I'm 
sorry, madam, I was thinking about something else. I mean no, you see, there 
are so many naval officers in Singapore one can hardly be acquainted with 
them all, and anyway I have never been let into the secret of who he is, I 
mean his name." 

"Of course," said my host smoothly, "unless he happened to be a personal 
friend of yours you would hardly be able to identify him without a name to 
go on. I don't suppose the unfortunate fellow would advertise it in the news 
bulletin at the base! A dog, perhaps, but a beautiful young wife of whom, I 
fear, he is exceedingly jealous? No. He will want to keep this news to 
himself. An enquiry agent perhaps. Such men are used to discretion, that is 
what they are paid for. In the mess I am quite sure you will not be reported 
as missing, my dear. You have gone to visit your mother no doubt, or a 
maiden aunt. A man does not advertise his shame!" 

"How well you know John!" I laughed. "No. He won't have said a word to 
anyone. Think of it, Mr. 

Hawkes, he might be your own Commanding Officer!" Hawke's laugh was forced. 

"Hardly that, my dear," my host said in a propitiating tone. "Mr. Hawkes is 
a pilot. Your husband is a seaman, a deck officer." 

"Of course I was only joking," I agreed. I decided I had said enough about 
my "husband." Although I didn't see now that it mattered since I was sure of 
my host's, my lover's, goodwill, I had no wish to commit a faux-pas. I was 
quite ignorant, more ignorant than a real Commander's wife would have been, 
of navy affairs. 

At that moment, fortunately, my host changed the subject. 

"And now, Hawkes, we must discuss the lady's journey. You have flown before, 
my dear?" I shook my head. 

"Well, a long journey in a small plane will certainly be an experience for 
you." 

"We set out at dawn as arranged?" Lieutenant Hawkes asked. 

"Tomorrow morning?" I said with some surprise. 

My host laid his hand on mine across the table. 

"The sooner you go, the sooner you'll be safe, my dear." 

"Your papers are in order?" Lieutenant Hawkes asked me. 

My host replied for me. "Quite in order." he said with finality. 

"In that case," Hawkes said, "tomorrow morning's as good as any. I don't 
want to hang about Singapore for my leave." 

"Quite so," the other replied. "Mr. Hawkes, my dear, is going to fly you as 
far as Calcutta, quite a distance, some 2,000 miles. You will of course 
break the journey, twice in fact, once at Bangkok and again at Rangoon. From 
Calcutta you can go where you want, by boat or train or in an ordinary 
passenger plane. Mr. Hawkes will not have time to take you farther. It is 
fortunate," he added meaningfully, "that you were able to bring your 
passport with you when you left your husband. I shall give it to Mr. Hawkes 
before you set out in the morning." 

The remainder of the meal passed very pleasantly. About ten o'clock, my host 
suggested that I should retire so as to be fresh for the morrow's journey. I 
did so gladly, hoping for once that my host would not visit me in my 
bedroom, because after a week's violent lovemaking my whole body ached with 
fatigue. 

I fell asleep quickly and I was not disturbed. 

The engine droned steadily. Below was the flat studded plain of a huge sea 
which stretched in all directions as far and beyond the eye's power of 
vision. Hawkes was even less talkative than he had been the evening before. 
He sat at the controls in wooden silence, his face set grimly, and his lean 
body relaxed. 

I had been studying the map. We had left the land behind us in less than two 
hours and its disposition as it disappeared in a purplish haze puzzled me. 
It seemed to me that if we flew across the sea at all en route for Bangkok 
we should leave land on, and not far on the left. As it was, we were now out 
of sight of land altogether, and, what was even more strange, we had seemed 
to fly above a very broad channel, leaving land to both sides of us as the 
channel widened into sea. There had been a number of ships, like dots 
bobbing in the ocean, but, now, for the best part of an hour there was 
nothing but the ominous endlessness of deep green sea. 

"Are you sure we're going the right way, Mr. Hawkes?" 

"Yes." He didn't even turn to answer. He was looking straight ahead. I felt, 
somehow, that he was tense and nervous. 

"What I can't understand," I said, pushing the map in front of him, "is how 
we left the land behind us. It doesn't seem right according to the map." 

"What do you mean?" 

"Well, we should have left the land behind us to the left." 

"We did," he said briefly. 

"We didn't!" I said in alarm. 

"Do you think I don't know how to navigate?" 

I didn't know what to say. 

"Perhaps you'd better take over," he said sarcastically. 

But I had begun to be afraid. 

"There was land to left and to right of us," I said. 

"Look," he said tonelessly, "If you think you can fly this plane better than 
I, you'd better take over." With that he pushed the steering column forward 
and released his grip on the controls. The plane gave a sickening lurch 
forward and downward and in a fraction of a moment, as he kicked one foot 
forward, twisted into a spin. I screamed and closed my eyes. How long we 
went downwards I don't know. I remember only that the spinning motion 
stopped and gradually with a terrible relentless motion the nose of the 
plane came upward almost, it seemed, out of the sea. And then we were flying 
low over the water at what appeared at that level to be an incredible speed. 

"Had enough?" I heard him say. 

"You damn fool!" I shouted angrily above the roar of the engine. "What do 
you think you're doing?" 

He didn't reply. He nosed the plane upward and slowly we gained height until 
we were flying at approximately the same height as before. 

"Who the hell are you, anyway?" he said suddenly. "What do you mean?" 

"Come off it," he said drily. "Do you think I like doing this?" 

"What?" 

"The game's up," he said, still without looking at me. "There's no use 
shamming any more. Look," and his voice was gentle suddenly, "I'm sorry to 
have to do this, really. You're a brave woman. I respect you. But this is no 
time for tomfoolery." 

"I don't know what you mean," I said. 

He shook his head hopelessly. "Look below you," he said. "Do you see any 
ships?" 

"No." 

"So you haven't a chance, have you?" I was terrified. He was looking at me 
now, not unkindly. 

"What are you saying?" I said, almost in tears. 

"Can I do anything for you? I can do it anonymously when I get back. Look, 
for God's sake, take a hold of yourself. You knew damn well what a dangerous 
game you were playing. All right you've lost. The next one might have more 
luck and then it will probably be my turn. And then, later on, his. They'll 
get him sooner or later." 

I broke into tears. "Please Mr. Hawkes! I don't understand! What are you 
going to do to me?" 

His handsome face turned toward me again and his grey eyes were gentle. "If 
it will make it easier for you," he said tenderly, "I'll shoot you first. 
But anyway, you'll be dead by the time you hit the water." 

"For God's sake tell me why!" 

"You make it very difficult for me," he said. "You must have known your job 
was dangerous." 

"What job?" 

"Oh, for God's sake cut it out!" he said. "Do you think we believed your 
Commander's wife story for a minute? Really, I didn't think the authorities 
could be so naive. Your job was suicide." 

"You must listen to me!" I said desperately. "You must believe. me! I don't 
know what you're talking about!" 

He looked at me incredulously. 

"Are you trying to tell me you are not an agent of the British government?" 

"Of course I'm not! Don't you see?" 

His expression was perplexed. "I almost believe you," he said. 

"You must believe me!" 

For a long time he was silent. 

"I believe you are telling the truth," he said at last. 

"Oh, of course I am!" I began to say, but he cut me short. 

"Quickly," he said, "tell me who you are and what you were doing in Chen's 
house." 

As briefly as possible I told him the history of my adventures since leaving 
my home village in Australia, how I had run away from home, given myself to 
men, travelled thousands of miles to arrive finally almost desperate in 
Chen's garden. He did not press for details about my sexual affairs but his 
lips loosened in a soft, nakedly sensual smile. And then he laughed. Turning 
to face me, he said: 

"You must prove it to me, Helen." 

"How?" 

"Have you ever made love in an airplane?" he said. I shook my head. 

He laughed softly. "Take off your clothes, Helen," he said. 

"Sit astride my knees," he said. 

I was standing beside him, completely naked. My clothes lay in a small heap 
by the side of his seat; his right hand, reaching to the cabin floor, 
stirred amongst my still-warm silk scanties. 

"How warm your clothes are!" he said, and his right hand moved upward from 
the discarded silks to the warmer, more living silken surface of my inner 
thigh. He pulled me gently towards him, raising his hand under the heavy 
substance of my thigh so that my leg swung over his knees and I had only to 
sit to bring my warm belly and the smooth-haired lip of my mound against his 
own parts, which he had bared with his free hand. With the other, he still 
controlled the flight of the plane, westward, across the vast waters of the 
Bay of Bengal. For, of course, I had not been wrong. We had travelled 
north-west from Singapore through the straights between Malaya and Sumatra, 
out above the open sea. With the hand which controlled out flight he pulled 
me close to his lower belly, his hand pressing against the smooth globes of 
my buttocks. His other hand, meanwhile, brought his excited member against 
the entrance to the cave of all my feeling. When he was satisfied with our 
position, the hand which had pressed me toward him returned to the controls, 
easing gradually back on the steering column so that my wet and pulsing 
vagina, parted at its extremity by his thrusting manhood, contained him 
suddenly like a glove. Up, up, up, the weight of my own flesh causing me to 
be spiked more deeply against the sudden upward motion of the plane. As we 
climbed, my whole body lay on top of his and his free hand, calmly and with 
the skill of a fine pilot, brought my head and my lips against his. We lay 
there, making an acute angle with the horizontal, our eyes open in the 
bright blue daylight which swamped us through the windows of the cabin, 
while little scudding wisps of cloud fell away below us at either side. As 
yet, we had hardly moved. 

It was the movement of the airplane which caused the creeping accumulation 
at our loins. His feet worked skillfully at the rudder-bars, tilting the 
plane and causing my torso to swivel voluptuously against his, our bellies 
grazing languorously and the shock of the meeting of our bodies absorbed by 
the resiliency at my breasts. Our bodies, together in illusory suspension in 
the wide ether, absorbed all space, the lure of stars, flesh chucked 
minutely against flesh in this strange carnal confluence. His strong, warm 
lower belly in its tilted position was the fang of a vast upward propulsion, 
raking with its fleshy dagger on the warm and viscous bin of lust which I 
lowered around his desire. Out of the world he seemed to drive me, beyond 
laws of motion, with the white ether streaming downward with no velocity. 
The shift, the slips, the slides, the slithers, the glides, the rolls did 
not move so much as concentrate a stranded passion, a still aerial 
conjunction which increased as the belly-surfaces, fused by some aerostatic 
law, shuddered and sang above our wet sexual confusion. I could happily have 
ridden there pricked by this man's passion until the world's end, but, alas! 
that was not to be, for at that moment, when the seeds shifted for the 
thousandth time in my craving womb, Hawkes' soft voice brought me back to 
the world. My eyes read 17,000 feet on the altimeter, saw again the trailing 
wisps of cloud and came finally to rest on the grey eyes which looked 
upwards into mine with a questioning look. 

I ran my fingers through the soft brown hair which framed the handsome face, 
the face of a flier, a dangerous man, a criminal, perhaps a traitor, but the 
face of a man with whom in the short space of an hour I had fallen violently 
and irrevocably in love. Here at last, I felt, was a man to whom I would be 
willing to surrender not only my body but my freedom. For the first time in 
my life, I felt then, I had met a man who was worthy of me. For an hour he 
had careened about the sky with me, controlling every tremor of our love 
with his wrist. I didn't answer him. I pulled his lips upward against mine 
and kissed him with all the doting passion at my command. It was I who spoke 
next. 

"Who is Chen, darling?" 

He laughed harshly. 

"Chen is a kind of king, darling. He controls the drug-traffic in south-east 
Asia." 

"And you?" 

"One of his pawns," he said with a quiet smile. "I do as I'm told, 
double-cross the Navy, and am tolerated because I'm useful. You see, I'm one 
of the naval pilots who have been lent to the Customs House to track down 
the head of the drug ring." 

"And he told you to get rid of me?" 

"Yes," he said quietly. 

"Are you glad you didn't?" 

He dropped his eyes. "You don't understand. Helen," he said. "That's what I 
was trying to say about being beyond choice." 

"What do you mean, darling?" 

"I have got rid of you." 

"How?" 

"I had no choice, Helen. When I made love to you I signed our death 
warrants. He would have killed me if I had taken you back, killed us both. I 
should have dropped you a while back. You see, my darling, there is not 
enough petrol to return to land. Another ten minutes and the tank will be 
empty." 

The grey eyes were looking into mine, calm and without fear. Even this 
sudden and shocking news of my impending death could not shatter the 
wonderful illusion of fulfillment. I lowered my lips on to his, brushing 
them merely with the wet, full curves of my own, and then, my mouth 
whispering in his ear, doting, trembling, I uttered the words: "Fuck me 
again, darling, now ... before it's too late...." 

I was still astride his naked thighs when the engine sputtered into silence. 
I burst into tears and tried to move away. 

He said: "Stay where you are, Helen, this is the best way to die. There's 
nothing we can do." 

Then began the long swift glide downward through the scudding wisps of 
cirrus clouds, and the sea, like a vast, inverted green-black saucer, moved 
upwards to meet us. 

"Don't turn, darling," he said quietly. "I'm going to bring her down as 
smoothly as I can." 

The sea at the windows on either side raced past like a vast and glittering 
black ribbon. As the plane lurched to alight, I threw my arms around his 
neck and crushed his head with all the strength of my torso against my naked 
breasts. The aircraft shuddered, slewed, somersaulted, and then, in a 
fraction of a second ... blackness. 

INSERTION by Major Pierre Javet, Adjutant, Ghardala. 

I regret the necessity of having to interrupt the account of Mile Helen 
Smith at this point. Unfortunately, there appear to be a number of sheets 
missing from the manuscript. 

The Arab denies all knowledge of these missing pages. He found the 
manuscript, he says, as it stands. All our attempts at "persuasion" have 
been of no avail. Thus, at a crucial point in the amazing document, we are 
left, to risk a figure of speech, "in the air!" In the water, rather, for 
the small aircraft must have hit the water to have somersaulted in such a 
manner. 

This is unfortunate in two ways. In the first place, the continuity of the 
woman's trek across the desert with the caravan is interrupted. When we take 
her up again, she seems to be installed in what I imagine is some kind of 
brothel, and we are thus deprived of pages in which the last stages of her 
journey might, through her descriptions, have taken on real geographical 
reference. That is to say, she might have described some well-known landmark 
whose presence in the manuscript would have led us to trace her whereabouts 
quickly and efficiently. As it is, progress in our investigations is, at 
least temporarily, blocked. 

Secondly, the continuity of the document as it pertains to her crash into a 
shark-infested sea with the young naval officer, Hawkes, and her subsequent 
appearance in the middle of India, is broken. How she escaped from the 
plight, and whether or not Hawkes perished (this latter appears likely 
because of a later reference in the manuscript to the young pilot) we shall 
perhaps never know. 

An interesting sequel, however. Information passed on to the British 
government about the character Chen has already led to his arrest and 
conviction on a charge of wide-scale opium smuggling in southeast Asia. 
Other facts have already been checked by the various governments concerned 
and every item of information (e.g. the burning alive in a barn not far from 
Sidney of a man called Tony Sulla, next to whose body was found a branding 
iron, and in whose flat was discovered correspondence which led to many 
subsequent arrests) has been corroborated. 

Thus, I feel, it would be stupid to doubt the veracity of the document. 
Literally, everything capable of corroboration has been subsequently 
corroborated. As for the character and inclinations of the protagonist 
herself, I should count myself fortunate indeed to be able to corroborate 
that for myself! 

 CHAPTER SEVEN 

(An unknown number of ms. pages missing) 

Delight in my body. for Abdullah, though a cruel man and without doubt a 
criminal, was an imaginative lover. The Godavari river was smooth, yellow, 
and oppressive. The nights were deep violet-blue, shadows everywhere, and 
the endless guttural din, low and suggestive, of white-cloaked figures which 
squatted near the river, smoking to drive off the mosquitoes. Sometimes a 
voice was raised, a shout, drunken laughter, sometimes the shrill cry of a 
woman or the whine of skinny children, and often, merely the eternal 
croaking of the frogs in the thick yellowish silence. 

"You will be my wife," Abdullah had said, running his strong brown hand with 
its thick calloused fingers through his beard. "You will have children. All 
the women have children. A woman is not a woman without children, and you 
will grow used to the life. We are an old people, a great people, although 
for the moment our star is not in the ascendant." 

He talked. Night after night when he returned to me he talked in a low 
guttural voice, indistinguishable from the voices of the other men, with the 
same heavy sensual accents, the same brave and wistful eyes. And his hand 
would come to rest on the hot sultry flesh of my thigh, and usually he would 
pull me underneath him and make love to me there and then, seeking I 
suspect, to bind me to him by creating his child in me, a child of the 
river, brown, skinny, who, if he was not carried off by cholera or typhus or 
one of the other diseases, would grow up to be such a man, fearless, a 
rebel, who had never grown to accept the yoke which the English had through 
centuries of conquest foisted on his people. 

I think he was proud to have conquered me, simply and childishly proud to 
have a white woman open her womb to his dark seed. And sometimes he would 
sit looking at me merely and softly call upon me to take off my clothes and 
bare the radiant smoothness of my torso for his dark and passionate lips. 

From the beginning, of course, I had no intention of passing the remainder 
of my life there by the execrable stench of the Indian river. I would like 
to have borne his child for him but I knew that that would be to seal my own 
fate. It was he whom I came near to loving, but with the love of a mature 
woman for her son. This great male who was the veritable king of the poor 
encampment on the banks of the Godavari was at heart a child, a child who 
rebelled against his "father," the British Raj, and who found in me a 
mother-a woman after all of the oppressors-who would connive and scheme with 
him for his eventual deliverance. Yes, I would not have grudged him a son, 
but to have become for always the subject of a subject and thus imperil my 
freedom so miraculously given back to me after the suicide flight over the 
Bay of Bengal-I could never have made that decision. Freedom? I don't know 
what that is, except that it has to do with the giving of the mystery of my 
flanks, with the taking of pleasure into myself; it is an act, but an act 
which must not be contaminated by an idealism such as was Abdullah's, 
Abdullah the oppressed, Abdullah the rebel, Abdullah the liberator. 

And so, one night I rose from our bed-rushes covered by a coloured 
blanket-and made my way through the undergrowth to the dirt road which led 
to the main road, itself a dusty and illhewn highway, to Bombay. I 
experienced no exultation in my infidelity, but I moved on, nevertheless, 
and never thought once of returning. 

The room is shuttered and hot. My companion is a girl of no more than 
fourteen, but in the fourteen days and nights during which we have been 
confined together she has grown from a slim young girl at the age of puberty 
into a plump little concubine whose startling whitish flesh, pale as 
mushrooms against her glossy black hair and the frail, silken pubic hairs, 
hangs in pudgy rolls at her belly and thighs. We are being groomed for love. 

We are being fattened on a special enlarging diet of oil and semolina; 
closeted in obscurity, out of daylight, so that our soft flesh will acquire 
the oily plump whiteness of asparagus. 

 CHAPTER EIGHT 

The room is shuttered and hot. We are unable to speak to one another, not 
knowing each other's language. For the first few days my companion merely 
stared at me, her eyes hostile, as though I were some strange and dangerous 
creature. Gradually, however, she ceased to be my enemy, and on the third 
day she ventured a shy and timid smile, and then, starved as we were of all 
other company and in the utter blackness of the fourth night as I lay at 
full length on the cushions which had been provided for me, I felt a sudden 
soft movement close at hand and the satin feel of hot flesh close to mine. A 
thrill of anticipation ran through me and in the comforting dark I cast off 
all modesty and moved over to meet the soft and tremulous front which was 
exposed to me. My arms encircled her. Our mouths met, shuddered in 
connection and opened their secrets to one another, more furtive and yet 
more complete from being wordless. Then, in the hot and musky atmosphere, 
poignant with the nurtured flesh of two young females bred for sex, we 
closed with one another, wetly, softly, and with low, moaning shudders of 
fulfillment. 

After that, I was not afraid to continue with my task of recording my 
adventures. My companion watched during those long days with a quizzical 
look, and then, when our strange and unappetizing food was brought to us, 
when she saw me move quickly to conceal the incriminating document, she 
smiled and nodded her dusky oval head in understanding. One day, when our 
servant had disappeared after bringing in our bowls of semolina, she went 
over to where I had hidden my diary, pointed, and put one now plump finger 
to her sensual lips. I smiled at her and nodded. At that, she returned to 
me, slipped her arms about my shoulders, and kissed me passionately on the 
lips. 

So I know I am safe. And I will write now, because I am anxious to complete 
my account so that, that done, I can sink into my new self, stripped of 
civilized refinements, and come to be as she is, my present lover, the plump 
little olive-skinned animal who, in the orchidaceous atmosphere of night 
will fold her thighs about me without fear. 

I had gone some five miles along the main road before dawn which rose redly 
over the brackish countryside. I walked as swiftly as I could, still clad in 
the blue-and-gold sari which Abdullah had given me. If I looked out of place 
there on the Bombay road, it was not because I looked like a white woman-I 
did not-but because my sari was too fine to have belonged to a peasant 
woman, and my brocaded slippers were not made to be scuffed about on the 
public road. Had I wished to merge with my background, I should have worn a 
sari of white cotton perhaps, and my feet should have been naked and stained 
with dust and mud. 

At the time, however, all this did not occur to me. I hoped soon to be given 
a lift in an ox-cart and calculated, for Abdullah had informed me that we 
were 250 miles from Bombay, that with luck I should reach my destination in 
a fortnight. I was not without money, for I had stolen some of the rupees 
which Abdullah had stolen from the Englishmen he had ambushed seven days 
before. I remembered with a shudder his gory description of how he had 
halted them with a cry for alms and how, all unsuspecting, they had fallen 
victim to his terrible knife. Abdullah was an outlaw, brave and handsome, 
with a superb brown body on which the muscles rippled like burnished brass, 
but he did not kill for gain, for the pleasure he could derive from money 
quickly earned, but from his idealism, for revenge. Such a man, while he 
might be attractive to some, made little appeal to me, beyond, that is, the 
obvious beauty of his physique. The most I could feel for him was the kind 
of indulgent love that a mother feels for a silly and headstrong child. 

As the sun rose over the rustling vegetation I was surprised by the musical 
horn "of a motor car which urged me to move over to the side of the road. I 
was so surprised that the scarf fell off my head revealing the flowing locks 
of my golden hair. At that, the car which had been about to pass halted 
raising dust under its white-walled tires about five yards behind me. It was 
a Rolls Royce. The rear door at my side opened and a fat, almost white 
Indian in a white suit stepped on to the roadway. He regarded me with a 
smile for a moment and then, approaching me, said: "You are going far?" 

I smiled at him. "As far as Bombay," I said. 

"My dear lady!" His plump face broke into a beaming smile. "You were going 
to walk?" 

"I have no other means of transport, sir," I said. 

"Then I insist, madam, that you allow me to drive you there. For that is my 
destination, and there is plenty of room in the car." 

"With great pleasure," I said pleasantly and stepped into the roomy car as 
he held the door open for me. 

When he had reseated himself, puffing, beside me, he patted me in a fatherly 
way on my knee and said charmingly: 

"I shall not embarrass you, my dear, with questions as to how you came to be 
in a such a predicament, miles even from the nearest village, and in your 
present attire. You may tell me what you wish, but if you would rather not 
say anything then I shall be quite content to accept your company for what 
it is, a gift from the gods!" 

I thanked him with a smile. 

He leaned forward, tapping with his fat knuckles on the glass partition. 
"Drive on, Ahmed," he said to the chauffeur. 

When he heard that I had made no arrangements for an hotel, Mr. 
Pamandari-for that was the name of my benefactor-insisted that I accept his 
hospitality at his own home, a gigantic villa a few miles from the centre of 
Bombay. He would like, he said, to introduce me to his daughter, a girl of 
eighteen whom he proposed sending in the near future to Europe, Paris to be 
exact, where she would enter a finishing school. She was a lonely girl he 
said, his only child, and if I would care to stay with them for a few weeks 
he was certain that she would be delighted with my company. She was called 
Nadya after her mother who had been a Russian. In some ways, he said, she 
was a very lucky girl, for she alone would inherit his great fortune when he 
died. 

I can truthfully say that I had no conception of what real wealth was until 
I entered the home of this rich Parsee. His house, a vast snow-white edifice 
standing in a large private park, boasted of two swimming pools, stables 
which included some of the finest thoroughbreds in India, tennis courts, and 
a vast array of hothouses which contained all varieties of orchids and other 
exotic plants. Two private helicopters stood beyond a line of plane trees at 
the extreme end of the lawn. The vast garden was cultivated immaculately by 
a corps of fifty gardeners, stable-boys and other retainers. As for the 
house itself, it contained an indoor swimming pool of black marble, a large 
library, and a veritable catacomb of reception rooms, lounges, dressing 
rooms and bedrooms, and one vast sun room completely draped in soft white 
silks. It was in this latter room that I first saw Nadya, a dark and 
beautifully proportioned girl of eighteen, her superbly subtle curves draped 
in turquoise Shantung silks, her slender, almost hazel coloured arms holding 
a wonderful mauve and white orchid above her head where she lay, examining 
its sensual curves from under her long jet-black eyelashes. She was 
obviously bored. She was lying on her back on the white silk-covered divan, 
one knee exposed through the split in her turquoise gown. 

"Nadya!" her father called eagerly. He obviously doted upon this only child. 

Lazily, she turned her head and her beautiful sensuous face relaxed in a 
radiant smile. 

"Father!" she said in a voice at once gentle and husky, "How wonderful, you 
are back at last! Look, isn't this a wonderful orchid?" 

"Beautiful, you naughty child!" her father said in an adoring voice, "You 
have been at my prize orchids again!" He turned to me. "Nadya has a passion 
for orchids. I have told her not to pluck them, they die so soon that way." 

"Ah but, father," she said in a sweet voice, "I couldn't resist this one. 
Surely you don't grudge your own daughter one of your orchids?" 

"They are all yours, Nadya darling," her father said in a tone of happy 
resignation, and he moved towards the divan on which she was reclining and 
kissed her on the forehead. 

"Whom have you brought to see me?" she said in a soft engaging voice. Her 
father turned towards me. 

"Come and meet my daughter, Helen." 

I moved forward. Her dark eyes flickered over the blue and gold sari which I 
was still wearing. Her first words were: 

"That's not a very pretty sari, is it Daddy?" And then to me: "I shall give 
you much more pretty clothes than that." 

Her father chuckled indulgently. "She is such a generous child!" he said 
half-apologetically, and turning to his daughter again: "This is Helen, 
Nadya. She is going to be our guest for a few weeks." 

"Oh, how lovely!" said Nadya delightedly, slipping on to her feet from the 
divan and kissing me on both cheeks. Her beautiful young body exuded a 
perfume of jasmine, warm from her pale dusky flesh. "And she must have the 
room next to mine!" she said, turning to her happy father again. "And I can 
give her all the clothes she wants!" 

"Take her, then, child," her father said gently. "She is your guest. Your 
old papa is tired after the long journey. He must rest tonight. Take care of 
your guest, Nadya." 

With that, he shook hands with me and left us alone. When he had gone, Nadya 
took me by the hand and led me upstairs to the bedroom adjoining her own. 
"I'll run your bath," she said eagerly, and slipped into the adjoining 
bathroom. I hesitated long enough to take in my surroundings, a richly 
carpeted room hung with flame-red silks, and then, docile as a lamb, I 
followed Nadya into the bathroom. This latter room was an amazing sight. It 
was decorated in a flame-red colour to match the room to which it formed an 
ante-room, and the bath, in the shape of a deep shell, was large enough to 
hold four people. Nadya was bending over the edge, stirring the water about 
with her hand. As I entered she looked round with a flashing smile and said: 
"Get undressed, Helen, I'll help you bathe!" 

Again just as meekly as before-this wonderful nymph had, as I was 
subsequently to discover, a way of getting just what she wanted in life, 
which was not surprising considering her physical beauty and her vast 
wealth-I did as I was told, slipping the sari from off my firm breasts, down 
over the shadowed rise of my haunches to a blue and gold heap at my feet. 
"How beautiful you are!" Nadya said delightedly. "Wherever did my father 
find you? I think you're the most beautiful person I've seen in my whole 
life!" 

"You should look in the mirror," I said drily. 

"Oh I do! Do you? But it's not much fun looking at oneself. It's much nicer 
to look at someone else!" 

I agreed with a smile. 

"Why don't you undress and bathe with me?" I said. "Oh, could I?" 

"Of course!" I laughed. Her childish delight was infectious. 

"Oh, I'd love to! Oh, how glad I am you came, Helen!" 

"I'm glad to be here," I said and I felt that that at least was the truth. 
Somehow, my previous existence, with all its excitements, even at its peak-I 
suppose that was with poor Hawkes-seemed lacking in scope beside all this. 
Nadya had literally everything, and she was offering, for the moment at 
least, to share it with me. "You'd better get undressed," I added. "You 
can't bathe with your clothes on." 

She giggled and in a trice she was naked beside me. 

A dusky flush appeared on her cheeks as she felt my eyes move downward over 
her figure, from the smooth column of her neck over her dark pink pointing 
nipples to the warm wall of her adorable and delicately whorled belly below 
which, at the junction of her dully sensual thighs, her mound, a shadowy 
undergrowth, thrust itself cheekily forward. She gazed down at herself under 
her alluring eyelashes and then, looking up at me again, she said 
tentatively: 

"I'm not as beautiful as you are...." 

I laughed. 

"Of course you are," I said, "You're the most adorable creature I've ever 
seen!" 

"Do you really think so?" 

I couldn't resist opening my arms to her. Without hesitation she ran into 
them, pressing her firm young body against mine and crushing my lips against 
hers in a passionate embrace. Poor child! What a violent surge of 
unsatisfied sex mounted within her! No wonder she was happy to have me 
there! Her father, with more money than he would ever know what to do with, 
had given her everything except an outlet for her passion. 

I ran my fingers over the smooth and trembling flesh of her buttocks. She 
moaned with pleasure and hid her face in my neck. But I had no intention of 
satisfying her there and then. Later there would be time for that. And so I 
pushed her away from me gently and held her beautiful longing torso at arms' 
length. 

"Softly, you pretty girl," I whispered. "Let us bathe now, we shall have all 
the time in the world for that later." 

She obeyed immediately and threw one of her pretty long legs over the side 
of the bath to test the heat of the water. As she did so, I noticed that the 
poor child's sex was wet with passion. I almost pitied her, but desisted. 

We sat in the water facing one another and tickling one another with our 
feet. 

"Oh, Helen, I have never enjoyed myself so much!" she said, sinking dreamily 
back into the water. 

"You lovely child!" I said. "You have everything in the world you can 
possibly want!" 

"I have now!" she said contentedly. 

I laughed. 

"You silly girl, you want a man, not me!" 

She chuckled. "Helen," she said, "Have you ever made love with a man?" 

"I did once," I said with a smile. 

"What was it like?" Her question rang out like a pistol shot. 

"You little bitch in heat!" I exclaimed. 

She pouted. 

"It's all right for you!" she said stubbornly, "You've slept with a man. 
I've hardly even seen one except for my father." 

"Your father is protecting you," I said. 

"Oh, I know all that! That's what he says! I just wish he would forget to 
protect me one day!" 

"Never mind, Nadya," I said. "I'll tell you about it and one day you'll have 
a man too." 

"Will you, Helen?" She half-swam through the water towards me. "Kiss me like 
a man does!" she said. 

I took her beautiful head between my hands and kissed her long and 
passionately on the mouth, forcing her lips apart with my tongue and sliding 
the latter into her mouth. She breathed heavily, her beautifully formed 
breasts tilted and tightening in passion, and sucked softly and contentedly 
at my proffered passion. But I drew away from her. 

"That's how a man kisses," I said. 

"It's wonderful!" she exclaimed. "Can we do it often, Helen?" 

"I intend to get washed now," I said firmly. "I've travelled a long way and 
I'm hot and sticky." 

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she said, suddenly repentant. "What a beast I am not 
letting you have your bath in peace! But I like you so much, Helen. You will 
stay for a long time, won't you?" 

"If you want me," I said. 

"I want you more than anything else in the world!" she said extravagantly. 

"Except a man," I said drily, and began to soap my arms. 

Nadya's bedroom opened on to a broad balcony. There, by the silver light 
which was shed through the open windows of the bedroom, we took dinner 
together, looking out across the great park. The night air was soft and 
scented with exotic vegetation brought from all corners of the globe to be 
transplanted in this haven of a loved daughter's girlhood, and these natural 
scents, of the flowers, exhalations of the budding trees, blended subtly 
with the delicate aromas distilled in the perfumeries of Arabia and France 
which clung to our bathed and silk-draped limbs. The room behind us 
glittered with silver and gold cloth and projected a suffusion of enchanted 
light over the delicacies which lay on the table before us. Faint 
night-noises came to us across the park. 

"What's that light over there?" I asked Nadya. 

"It's the headlights of a car on the road about a mile away," Nadya replied 
sweetly. "Sometimes I watch them for hours," she sighed. "They are all going 
somewhere. I never go anywhere. The park is lovely but it's a bore." 

"Your father said that he was going to send you to school in Paris," I said. 
"Do you not know about it?" 

She smiled wistfully. "He would never send me without a chaperone. He might 
say he is going to but he never will. My mother wanted it. My mother was a 
beautiful woman, a woman of the world. My father is in some ways very 
provincial. My mother used to laugh at him." 

"I'll speak to him, Nadya. I'll tell him it would be good for you to go to 
France." 

"Oh, if you will, he may listen to you!" 

"The only point is, Nadya, that the reason you want to go is precisely the 
reason he doesn't want you to go." 

She laughed softly. 

"You don't need to tell him that," she said slyly. 

"Do you think he doesn't know?" 

"Oh, dear!" she said in the voice of a spoiled child, "I'll never get away!" 
And then she became suddenly excited. "Listen, Helen! If you were to offer 
to go with me to Europe, he might let me go!" 

"Don't be silly, I hardly know him." 

"Oh, but he likes you, I can tell. He might let me go if you were to go with 
me, really Helen. You'd like to go, wouldn't you?" 

It was a possibility. The only trouble was that I didn't have a passport. My 
journey halfway round the world was illegal. I wondered whether Mr. 
Pamandari could get me one. Ever since I had set out from Australia, my 
steps had been dogged by the lack of this vital document. At any moment if 
the police should question me, I could be in trouble. But surely my host, 
with all his wealth, could arrange to get one for me? And Nadya's father 
would surely do his utmost if his daughter begged him to. I decided to 
tackle Nadya on the subject that very night. I had no doubt that she would 
be a willing accomplice. 

"You would like to go, wouldn't you?" she said again. 

"Yes Nadya, but let's not talk about it just now. Later, when we go to bed." 

A crafty look came over the girl's beautiful face. "You will sleep with me," 
she announced. And then she giggled: "It will be fun, won't it?" 

"What would your father say?" 

"Oh, he'll never know! We'll rumple up your bed as though you'd slept in it 
and we'll lock both our doors. Anyway, there's a communicating door between 
our rooms. If anybody comes, you can easily slip back to your own bed before 
I open the door. See, it's easy!" 

I laughed resignedly. 

"Alright," I said, "But only for tonight." 

She giggled again. "Oh, Helen, you're wonderful! Let's go soon, now! Wait! I 
must go and say goodnight to papa. I'll tell him you were tired after the 
journey and have gone to bed." With that, she rose from her seat on the 
balcony and ran into the room towards the door. As I heard it close behind 
her, I got up myself and walked slowly across Nadya's room to the 
communicating door. In my own room I turned down the bed and undressed, and 
then, wearing a thin silk nightgown I slipped back into Nadya's room, 
climbed into her bed and drew the covers up to my chin. With Nadya's help, I 
had begun to realize, nothing was beyond me. 

Her silvery laugh came from the other side of the room. 

"Helen! You're in bed already!" She was standing with her back to the door 
which she had locked behind her, slim, of medium height, as graceful as a 
fawn. Her dark eyes were shining delightedly in my direction, and then, 
suddenly meek, she hung her head and moved across the room silently towards 
me. 

"I said goodnight to papa," she said, sitting down at the edge of the bed, 
almost reluctant, I felt, to remove her clothes. 

I watched her with a smile. 

"Shall I come in now?" It was the voice of a child. 

"You'd better take your clothes off first." I said. 

Once again, in a lightning movement, she peeled her sensuous flesh of its 
silk coverings and stood naked before me. Again, ashamed of her body's heat, 
her petal-like eyelids dropped, veiling the eagerness of the dark eyes. Her 
movements were beautiful. When she poised on the balls of her feet, her 
pelvis was thrust forward and her breasts pricked into firm erection. Her 
full buttocks and her delicately studded belly shone dully with that 
peculiar gloss of young and virgin flesh, while the proud black tussock at 
the crux of her torso overhung the smooth and supple downward sweep of her 
tapering legs. With hesitation, she opened her eyes and looked down at me. 
"Do you really think I'm beautiful, Helen?" 

"Of course you are!" 

"I'm coming in," she said, as though to conceal her nervousness. I did not 
reply. A moment later, in the darkness-for with nervous haste she moved over 
quickly and switched out the light-I felt her desperate young flesh close 
against me. I took her firmly and gently into my arms. She made no 
resistance, shuddered slightly and buried her face in my neck. With one hand 
I touched her buttocks, grazing their delicate skin with slow titillating 
strokes to kindle her hymeneal torch with the flint of desire. She breathed 
deeply and her body exuded a sweat as delicate and as tentative as spring 
rain. "Kiss me like a man, Helen," she whispered urgently. I moistened my 
lips with my tongue and lifted her head so that hers, dry with fearful 
anticipation, waited at a distance of a fraction of an inch, a leaf's 
thickness away, and slightly apart, inviting like the curtains of a woman 
who is desperate but ashamed. I touched their soft palpable surface with the 
tip of my tongue, moistening the contours and causing her whole torso to 
twitch and quiver. Then my lips pressed more firmly against hers, her 
resistance gave, and my tongue penetrated into the melting vortex of her 
mouth. At first it was slack, passive, and( unresponsive. It was the torrid 
part of her body which responded, blindly, closing its simmering flesh 
against me in the strange tropical heat generated by our bodies beneath the 
sheets. The mouth, which I suppose she identified with her will, for it was 
her mouth which was being wooed, or thus anyway she deceived herself, was 
open in a soft desperate paralysis. She would not give. She was being taken. 
She ignored the ebullient purpose of her loins, the feverish volcano which, 
set like a second and less modest mouth at the junction of her sweltering 
thighs, rubbed itself voluptuously like a cat against my thigh. That mouth 
was out of sight and thus she could pretend that it did not exist. Its 
luxury, its dissipation, was no part of her will which, mummified little 
nothing that it was, sought to give the impression of resistance by a 
feigned passivity of lips and tongue, which was the more sensitive under the 
sham anesthetic. Shortly, however even the show of resistance became 
impossible. She could delude herself no longer. She wanted me to goose her, 
to pretend that I was the man whom, in the lonely meadow of her bed, she had 
desired since the age of puberty. Tentatively, I felt her lips close round 
my tongue, making a voluptuous channel for it, shadowing in time, in 
imagination, the channel which she would gladly give to the male thing when 
it would come. Softly, through our gentle lapping motions, her whispered 
words came to me: "Be a man for me, Helen!" All this while, I had not been 
physically insensible. The vast liquefaction of my ever-present desire had 
already spread throughout the soft vinery of my limbs. I could no longer 
resist the child's passion. My fingers sought her soft and excited crevice, 
pruning the hairs, and slipping easily at first into the wonderful 
slime-coated sheath. She was a virgin. How ludicrous for this beautiful 
creature to have suffered so long! I would have given anything at that 
moment to be a man. As it was, there was something abortive in this sweet 
cultivation of her. How soft she was against the fine linen sheets! What a 
weight of sensuality quivered in her bossy thighs! What superb husbandry the 
tillage of this virgin field demanded! I felt suddenly unworthy, remembering 
the day of my own spring and my bucolic capers on the lonely beach. My first 
lover had been the sea himself, Poseidon, ravishing me under a wave. But it 
was too late to back out now. The subtle grammar of her sex had transformed 
this peerless Indian maiden into a lusty wench such as one might find giving 
herself to an elderly ploughman in the hayloft of a barn. She was a slut, a 
hot bitch who demanded satisfaction. She no longer spoke or even attempted 
to. She was a sweet bitch in the raw, gamy, sweaty, sweltering, bucking her 
beautiful arse like a serving-maid under a milkman. She intended to be had 
and my slender fingers were already too far in for safety. Her maidenhead 
was rending. Her whole belly was in flames. "Aaaaeee.." This had the effect 
of putting me at a distance. I felt responsible for her. If her father found 
out he would skin me alive and I had already realized that the morrow's 
sheets would bear the telltale marks. I shook her and tried to bring her to 
her senses. 

"Nadya!" I said urgently, removing my fingers hastily. I felt myself grasped 
desperately and her body, suffocated with its passion, used mine as I had 
used the log on the beach a long time ago. But I was adamant. If this was 
what she wanted she would have it. But I had no intention of compromising my 
position as a friend of the family. I took her cruelly by the neck and with 
my knee I forced her smoldering loins away from me. But I had reckoned 
without the will of the child. That factor in the situation had now reversed 
its direction and was reinforcing the white-hot combustive lust which had 
incendiarised her whole belly. 

She had gone mad. "Do it!" she said fiercely. "If you don't do it, I'll 
scream and tell my father you forced me!" 

Nothing would extinguish her. At least nothing which seemed to go against 
her will. And so I changed my tactics. 

"Nadya, darling," I crooned, "Of course I am going to do it to you! I want 
to do it as much as you do! But we must be careful, my little virgin! 
Otherwise the servants will know and it may get to your father ... you 
wouldn't want that, would you?" 

This had the effect of calming her. Her grip relaxed. 

"How?" she said. 

"We must turn on the light for a moment," I said. "Do it and I'll show you." 

There was no shyness in her movements. Her smoldering young body was brought 
into bold relief by the soft electric lights. She stood there, a few yards 
from the bed, her wonderful tawny breast heaving and her belly rising and 
falling with the effort of breathing. 

I slipped out of the bed and turned back the sheets. 

There, on the snow-white linen was a telltale stain of blood. 

She looked at it with non-comprehension. 

"Is that me?" she asked in a small voice. 

"Yes, darling," I said, "That's what I mean. We must be careful." 

Quickly I removed the sheet and carried it into Nadya's bathroom. She 
followed me like a little dog and stood watching me with interest. As I 
rinsed the stained part of the sheet in cold water I was suddenly struck by 
our twin reflection in the mirror. I was fair and she was dark. Without 
exaggeration I don't think I had ever seen two such superb young creatures. 
Both bodies seemed to be inhabited by an almost supernatural lissome 
radiance. There was not an ugly curve on either of us. 

My tenderness for her returned. 

"You see, darling," I said, "You haven't done this before. And the first 
time one does it one always bleeds a little. It's nothing to worry about, 
but we must take precautions." I wrung the water out of the sheet and 
examined it to see if any traces of the mark remained. 

Nadya, meanwhile, nodded, came close to me and kissed me lightly on the 
cheek. "You're very good to me, Helen. I didn't mean it about telling my 
father, honestly I didn't!" 

I smiled. At the time she would have screamed without compunction. She was 
used to having her own way and would make a bad enemy. 

"Of course not, darling," I said gently. "But if you want to go on, we must 
take precautions." 

"Oh, we must go on, Helen! I've never experienced anything like it in my 
whole life! Please let's go on, Helen!" 

"Alright, but you must promise to do as I tell you. If you disobey your 
husband as you tried to disobey me he'll beat you." 

"He wouldn't dare!" she said proudly, but then her air of superiority was 
suddenly transformed into a look of genuine surprise. "Would he, Helen?" 

"You wait and see," I said. "But meanwhile if you do as you're told you'll 
never have cause to complain that your Helen wasn't good to you." 

"Oh, I'll be good, Helen! I promise I will! And I'll tell you what! I'll get 
my father to get you everything you want!" 

"There is something I want, as a matter-of-fact," I said, "but we'll speak 
about that later." 

"Oh, what is it, Helen? Tell me and I'll get it for you!" 

"You wouldn't understand. It's a passport." 

"What's that?" 

"Don't worry your pretty little head about it. I'll speak to your father 
about it." 

"Come on, Helen...." She had forgotten about it already. She was standing 
close to me, her hands on my naked hips, with a playful sensual smile on her 
lips. 

"Just be patient, Nadya. Here, take this sheet and put it back on the bed. 
I've got to find something to put over it." 

She took it gaily and slipped back into the bedroom. 

When she had gone, I selected a large bath-towel. She had laid the sheet on 
the bed again and was lying naked on top of it, her arms stretched out like 
a cross and her legs spread wide, like the estuary of a deep river. I 
couldn't withhold my admiration. "Really Nadya," I said, "you're the 
loveliest girl I've ever seen!" 

She smiled, simulating shyness. 

"What would you like to do to me?" Her voice was sensual. 

"You'll find out soon enough," I said, advancing towards the bed. I threw 
the towel towards her. "Put that underneath you on top of the sheet," I 
said. She obeyed. 

A moment later I was in bed with her. 

Her soft hands, still moist, alighted at once on my hips and drew the lower 
part of my body toward her. At the same time I was surprised to feel her 
fingers, restless and inquisitive, like birds at a nest. "Do you like that?" 
she whispered softly. In answer I put my arms round her and drew her close 
to me, forging close, and our lips met again, this time without hesitation 
and completely thawed in sexual abandon. Meanwhile, the corrosive motion of 
her fingers ignited the seed, as incandescent as magnesium, in my loins, 
and, chafing strongly with my limbs, I swung one heavy thigh across her and 
mounted her. She trembled at my weight, dragged her legs from under me and 
raised them in a cleft stick on either side. She had asked for it and I 
intended to give her it without mercy. I felt my hands take hold of her. A 
low, quavering whinny burst from her lips and her long nails sank into the 
flesh at my shoulderblades. I let her body grow used to the feel of the 
thing inside her and then I began to strum her, diminuendo, until her 
magnetized hips rose and fell in a strange syncopated dance. She came soon 
after that, for the first time in her life, and in the heat of her 
virginity. As her body's movements grew slack, I drew her buttocks on to my 
shoulders, and pressed my mouth against her lovely wound. Her belly rose and 
fell, expiring, so it seemed, all the waters of her maidenhood. Her belly 
was wet with the delicate perfumed perspiration of her quenched lust. Under 
my tonguing, however, her passion began to reassert itself. I caught it in 
its rise, reversed positions, and forced her head to my own soft lyre. She 
fell to her task with an eagerness which soon brought the sacred fire into 
the most Stygian, the most crepuscular part of me. 

"I see," Mr. Pamandari said. "Well, don't worry my dear, it can no doubt be 
arranged." 

We were seated in the sun room, Nadya, her father and myself. It was about a 
week after my arrival. During that week Nadya and I had become inseparable. 
She had brought up the subject and Mr. Pamandari had turned to me in a 
fatherly way and asked me how I happened to be in India without a passport. 
Briefly, omitting all compromising details, I told him of my leaving home 
and of my stowing away on a merchant ship which was bound for India. I 
admitted that I had been discovered in the hold but I said that I had 
managed to leave the ship, unknown to the Captain, at Madras. From there on, 
I told him I had wandered through India until the moment at which he had 
found me near the Godavari river. He was kind enough not. to insist on 
details. On the contrary, whenever I seemed embarrassed in my account, he 
glossed over the subject with a "Yes, of course, it's not important," until, 
when I had finished, he said "I see," patted me on the shoulder and told me 
not to worry about it. 

"It may be difficult," he continued, "to obtain a British passport. There, 
it is not easy to bribe. But I can no doubt get you a Turkish passport, or 
an Egyptian one. We shall see." 

Nadya jumped up and kissed her father on the forehead. "I told her you would 
get one for her and you will, won't you?" 

"I shall do my best, dear," said the Parsee modestly, and added, "If I would 
do it for Helen alone, then you may be sure that if it is your wish also I 
shall be doubly certain to do it." 

"There!" said Nadya, turning to me triumphantly. 

Mr. Pamandari waved aside my attempt to thank him. 

"My dear," he said, "If you could for one moment imagine the change you have 
brought in Nadya since your fortunate arrival in this house, you would 
realize that it is I who am indebted to you. You have been more than a 
sister to her. So say no more about it." 

"Papa," Nadya said, "If Helen would come to Europe with me, would you allow 
me to go?" 

"Haha!" he said with an indulgent smile, "So that is why you are so anxious 
for Helen to have a passport!" 

"Well, it's one of the reasons," Nadya admitted grudgingly. 

"And how do you feel about it, Helen?" he said, turning to me. 

When I shrugged my shoulders in an effort to seem constrained, he 
continued:- 

"One of the reasons I have not allowed Nadya to go to Europe has been the 
fact that I knew of no one in whose charge I could send her. As you know, my 
daughter will one day be a very rich young lady. Naturally, I am not happy 
about the thought that without proper supervision she may fall for the 
charms of some mountebank. But this puts a different complexion on the 
matter. If you were willing to escort her during her sojourn, I might not 
feel so bad about it. Nadya knows nothing about the world. To some extent, 
that is my fault. But then, it is always difficult for a widow like myself. 
Whom should I trust? She has no mother, no sisters. But now it is different. 
I have seen her bloom in your company. And I flatter myself that I am a 
shrewd enough judge of character to known that you, Helen, are to be trusted 
implicitly. You would see to it that she didn't get into bad company. I have 
never been in Paris myself, but they tell me that it is a sink of vice. And 
if one can judge from the literature that comes out of that city I am 
inclined to believe it. Virginity there is evidently not worth a fig!" 

I had my doubts if virginity was worth a fig anywhere, more doubt about 
whether it ought to be, but I refrained from expressing them. I said 
merely:- 

"My dear Mr. Pamandari, I am deeply grateful for your opinion of me, all the 
more so because I am not worthy of it. I suspect that any young person would 
have made your daughter happy. She has been too much alone for too long a 
time. Of course she is glad to have company, but to be her protector in a 
foreign country, really, I doubt whether I could undertake such a 
responsibility. 

This pretty speech redoubled his trust in me. He actually got up from his 
chair and kissed my head. 

"Dear Helen," he said, "it is because you would not lightly undertake such a 
responsibility that I have faith in you. Oh, you must forgive me! but I have 
not been blind to your devotion to my daughter since you came to my house. 
You have been both a mother and a sister to her!" 

And a husband, I said under my breath. 

"I would have to think it over," I said at length. 

"Do so, dear lady! and rest assured that should you decide to accompany her, 
there will be adequate means at your disposal to make the trip just as 
enjoyable as you would want it to be. But think it over, by all means, for I 
am in no hurry to get rid of either of you!" 

 CHAPTER NINE 

We have been here for three weeks. No male has been to see us during all 
this time. But from the mood of my companion I suspect that our time here is 
drawing to a close. Every time the servant enters with our bowls of semolina 
the girl giggles. She is obviously expecting a visit from someone else. She 
grows more excited daily. She is now a little barrel of soft whitish flesh, 
tufted voluptuously at its centre. 

For myself, I too have put on weight, but, being taller, the fat which I 
have put on-it is most evident at my thighs, my belly, and at the front of 
my body close to my armpits-is not, even from a western point of views, so 
unbecoming. I can understand a man's preferring the opaque weight of flesh 
as it has been cultivated on us. From my point of view, it makes little or 
no difference. On the contrary, if, in the eyes of the men I shall 
eventually meet, it increases my desirability, my attraction as a sexual 
object, then it is all for the good; I welcome my new condition. 

But I am certainly looking forward to the end of this strange imprisonment. 
I am bored by this girl. She giggles all the time. I suspect she has been 
bought from a poor family, that in the past she had to work and that she is 
more than content to have put that life behind her for the sluggish luxury 
of the present one. 

Because of the diet, perhaps, I have become lethargic. I have no wish to do 
anything. When the time comes, I shall be quite content to love and sleep-a 
stuporous round-I think I was born to be one of the lotus-eaters. In the 
west everybody is busy because his neighbour is. Mountains of industry, seas 
of commerce come into being, and, once in being, exert their damning 
influence on the sons and grandsons of those who created them. Art, the 
aesthetic of the flesh, the cultivation of leisure, are despised, tolerated, 
perhaps, but basically thought of as not quite respectable. Love in the west 
thus becomes hysterical, almost epileptic. Everything is computed in terms 
of time, so much time for this, so much time for that, it must not be 
"wasted." Geared for industry, those stupid westerners never pause to 
analyze the word "waste." Time is accepted without questions as valuable; 
like money or land or food, it must not be "wasted"; at the end of an hour 
one must have something to show for it. The question for them is: What 
"excuse" for passing the hour in such and such a way? If one can produce 
riches at the end of the hour, then the time has not been "wasted." But if 
one has merely derived pleasure from living? If one considers living 
important-in itself? 

The western God, the Jewish God, was invented to make the hatred of life 
logical. 

We sailed in the most luxurious suite of the new luxury liner, the Empress 
of Nepal. 

Mr. Pamandari had provided me with a checkbook. 

"Write checks as you require them, my dear," he had said with an indulgent 
smile. "Spend liberally and do not try to economize. All I ask is that you 
look after Nadya's interests. Keep her out of trouble." 

He waved to us from the pier head as the huge liner, on its maiden cruise 
was pulled slowly out of the harbor by an army of tugs. When his stout 
friendly figure disappeared in the distance we went immediately to our suite 
and began to unpack our luggage. 

We had both been provided with an elaborate trousseau which contained a 
complete European outfit, costumes, dresses for morning, afternoon and 
evening, as well as an indescribable variety of Indian costumes. Two maids 
accompanied us and did the actual work of the unpacking under our 
directions. Their names were Sarah and Luna, pretty, delightful creatures 
with large black eyes and a zest for life. They could hardly contain their 
excitement about the trip and when they passed from one room to another in 
each other's company we would hear their excited tinkling laughter coming 
through the open door. 

Nadya sighed with pleasure and threw herself on a chaise longue. "Helen," 
she said, "Do you think Sarah and Luna do what we do? I mean, do servants do 
that as well?" 

"Of course," I replied. I was filing my nails. "I'm not sure that I like 
it," she said. "What?" 

"Their doing it." I looked up from my hand. "Why on earth shouldn't they?" 
She pouted. "Well, they're only servants after all...." 

"They're human." 

"Oh, I suppose so," she admitted grudgingly, "But, Helen, you don't suppose 
a man would prefer them to us, do you?" 

"Some men might. It all depends on the man." 

She didn't appear to be very pleased about this. After a moment she said: 
"Well, whenever we go anywhere we'll leave them at home, won't we?" 

"Of course. You don't take your servant everywhere." 

"Oh, I'm glad about that, because Helen...." She was looking at me with 
great seriousness. 

"Yes?" 

"When mother was alive, she had a maid called Tajli-it's a pretty name isn't 
it?-and one day I heard my mother quarreling with my father. She was saying 
she couldn't bear the thought of him with a servant. I didn't know what she 
meant at the time." 

"And what did you father say?" 

"Papa just laughed. Laughed! How horrible for my mother! And he said that if 
she liked she could get another maid. And she said: 'So that you can spend 
more time with that horrible little Tajli!' And he said he didn't see that 
it mattered whether it was Tajli or someone else, that at least you could 
control a servant. But my mother said that it was unbearable. I remember her 
words, 'Quite unbearable!' she said. And so Tajli went away." 

"Your mother was a European." 

"I think she was quite right," said Nadya with emphasis. "Sarah and Luna had 
better not try to interfere with my men!" 

"I'm sure they'll be too busy with their own," I said. 

"Well, I hope so." 

There was evidently no doubt in Nadya's mind as to the object of her trip. 
She was out to have a man, and the sooner the better. And, as I realized 
that I would be quite unable to prevent her, I took the opportunity of 
instructing her in the art of birth control. I had no mind to have her 
pregnant by the first oaf who happened to conceive a lust for her. While I 
did not sympathize with her father's views on virginity, I had every respect 
for his fears regarding her enslavement by a mountebank. Without me, she 
would have been the dupe of the first handsome gold-digger who came along. 
When I considered this, I began to have doubts about the supposed naivety of 
Mr. Pamandari. It was just possible that he recognized the inutility of 
starving his daughter any longer, and, recognizing in me a woman of the 
world, he had decided that under the circumstances I was the best possible 
"chaperone" for her. After all, he was old and experienced enough to know 
that only a poor woman is compromised by a bad reputation. A girl of Nadya's 
beauty and wealth is above being compromised unless she gives all her money 
away to some scoundrel. And Nadya was unable to do this for the simple 
reason that only I could write the checks and only Mr. Pamandari could 
honour them. I was so struck by the wisdom of this scheme that I went 
straight to the Radio office and sent the following cable to my benefactor:- 

Don't worry about Nadya. She will return in one piece and without 
attachments. 

Love, Helen. 

Two hours later I received the following reply:- 

Trust you implicitly. Have always respected intelligence. 

Love, Pamandari. 

I felt very happy about this discovery. I had hitherto believed that I would 
have to keep up a pretence of virtue in front of Nadya's father. Now it was 
a relief to know that barring strangleholds there were no fouls in this 
exciting game. Nadya could "wrestle" to her "heart's" content; I was on hand 
to see that she didn't get her neck broken. 

I decided at once that as soon as we had had dinner 

(which was served to us in the dining room of our own suite) we would scout 
out the territory in the ballroom on the first-class deck. When I suggested 
this to Nadya, she was delighted. It would be the first time that she had 
been let loose amongst men. 

Thus, a few hours later, immaculately clad in the most expensive of evening 
dresses, we entered the ballroom. It was already crowded with excited men 
and women-the usual miscellaneous group one finds on the First Class Deck of 
a luxury liner, some there for pleasure, others for profit, all without 
exception excited by the prospects which membership of a completely new and 
cosmopolitan society afloat on the ocean offered them. There would, I 
supposed, be few virgins at the end of the voyage. With that thought at the 
forefront of my mind, I steered the beautiful Nadya across to the bar. As we 
crossed the floor I was conscious of all eyes turning in our direction. This 
was hardly surprising. A ship is a small world. Our fellow passengers would 
no doubt be aware that it was we who occupied the so-called "Royal Suite" on 
board the Empress of Nepal. They would also be aware that we were travelling 
alone with two maids and otherwise unchaperoned. Add to this the fact that 
we were without doubt the two best-looking young women aboard and it is not 
difficult to understand why we attracted attention. The mothers of virgins 
were jealous of us, the eligible young men were inquisitive about us, and 
the sharks converged upon us. At least three men of various ages made their 
way discreetly towards the bar in front of us. 

Before we reached the bar, however, one of the ship's officers had advanced 
and presented each of us with a large bouquet of roses, this service 
doubtless arranged for by the machinations of Mr. Pamandari of Bombay. We 
accepted them casually and continued to the bar where the crowd made way for 
us and soon we were seated on two of the high bar-stools, our pretty high 
heels just visible below the hems of our dresses. 

The barman bowed. "Miss Pamandari, Miss Seferis," he said with a smile of 
greeting. 

I must explain that the passport which Nadya's father had obtained for me 
was a Greek one, and my name was now Helen Seferis. 

We took coffee and liqueurs. As Joe, the barman, was filling our glasses, a 
bronzed young man of about thirty, coming up from Nadya's side, spoke to us. 

"May I introduce myself?" he said in a pleasant American voice. "My name's 
Devlin, Harry Devlin. I'm from Boston." 

"Oh," said Nadya sweetly, "Where's that?" 

Mr. Devlin appeared to be slightly put out by this innocent question. But he 
retained his smile, saying, "It's in Massachusetts, you know, I'm from New 
England." 

"My father knows many Englishmen," Nadya said pleasantly. 

"Mr. Devlin means he's an American," I said helpfully. 

"Yeah, that's right," Mr. Devlin said. 

"I am Nadya Pamandari," Nadya said, "And this is my friend, Helen Seferis." 

"Glad to know you, Miss Seferis," Mr. Devlin said. 

After finishing our drinks we retired to one of the tables in the ballroom 
with the young man whose modest conversation and handsome figure made a 
great impression on Nadya. She danced a number of dances with him. 
Meanwhile, a second young man joined us. He was an Italian called Mario 
Ratsonli. He was, if anything, a little younger than Harry Devlin, and very 
good-looking in a Latin way. He seemed to prefer me to Nadya, and, as we 
danced he had a delicious habit of placing one of his thighs between mine so 
that through two or three thicknesses of material I could feel the shape of 
his strong thigh on my mound. 

I did nothing to discourage his obvious advances, nestling close with my 
belly against his as we danced round the room. Only when he suggested that 
we should go out on to the deck together did I think it necessary 
temporarily to call a halt. 

"Later, Mario," I said with a smile. "For the moment I would rather dance." 

He followed me meekly back to the table where Nadya and Harry Devlin were 
already seated. As we sat down, Nadya said excitedly:- 

"Harry's been telling me all about America, Helen! It must be a wonderful 
place! Perhaps Papa would let us go there after we've been to Paris." 

Devlin was obviously flattered by the unembarrassed attentions of this 
beautiful young Indian girl. Looking him over, I decided that she could have 
done worse for her first experiment. He was handsome, generous, obviously 
not poor as I suspected Mario was; indeed, at that moment I had no doubts 
about him. Devlin danced with me next and during the dance took none of the 
liberties which Mario had taken. 

"You're a friend of the family?" Devlin said in an obvious attempt to place 
me. 

"Hardly," I said. "Mr. Pamandari is a business associate of my father." I 
said this because I thought it would be unwise to have it known that I was 
Nadya's watchdog. Few people know anything about Greece, so I might have 
been anyone's daughter. 

The change in his attitude was obvious. He took much more care with his 
dancing and ushered me to my seat as though I were something of more than 
ordinary fragility. I had already made up my mind to sleep with Mario and 
decided to take the first opportunity to tell Nadya that she had my approval 
if she felt like sleeping with Devlin. There were four of five bedrooms 
attached to our suite and so, with a certain amount of discretion, it would 
be quite possible to provide opportunities for both men. For this reason, I 
took Nadya's arm and led her through into the retiring room. I told her of 
my plan, warned her again to take the precautions I had outlined to her, and 
told her that I would leave with Mario after the next dance. 

"Wait at least half an hour," I said, "because we may stroll around the deck 
for a while. And see that Devlin leaves before dawn." 

After that we powdered our noses, kissed one another, and returned to the 
ballroom. 

Mario danced even more sensually than before. 

His hand sometimes strayed from my waist to the naked part of my back and 
the touch of his fingers combined with the intervolved movement of our lower 
bodies lulled me into an apposite sensuality. We were turning slowly near 
the exit. 

"Let's go on deck for a while," I said suddenly. 

He agreed with alacrity and as we went out I had a last glimpse of Nadya and 
Devlin. They were leaning towards one another over the table, he fingering 
his champagne glass, and she looking into his eyes, talking like 
conspirators. I felt a slight pressure at my arm and followed Mario on to 
the deck. 

For a while we stood looking over the rail, looking down at the streaming 
beads of efflorescence, glowing like phosphorus, which bounded from the 
belly of the ship and disappeared along the side into our wake. Mario 
dropped his cigarette end which fell in an apparently curving line to the 
sea. 

I yawned. "I'm tired," I said, "I don't think I'll go back to the dance. 
It's so stuffy in there." 

He followed politely as I made my way toward our suite and as I put out my 
hand to say goodnight I wondered what excuse he was going to make to follow 
me in. He accepted my hand but held it in his own without letting go. "Are 
you not going to invite me in to take a nightcap?" he said. 

"Just for a moment, then," I said, "because I'm very tired." 

He followed me in to the sitting room. "Make yourself comfortable," I said. 
"What will you have?" 

"You have cognac?" 

I poured two large cognacs and carried one over to him. Then I sat down 
beside him on the couch. For a few minutes we sat making small talk and then 
I rose, switched on the radio and returned to my seat. I turned down the 
lights, leaving only one lamp which cast a pale circular ring on the carpet 
near our feet. 

"Let's dance," I said. 

He got to his feet immediately and took me in his arms. It was a slow 
foxtrot. We glided silently out of range of the lamp, our bodies pressed 
close together and moving voluptuously in unison. Once again I felt his 
thigh insistent between mine and his hand slipped downwards from my waist on 
to the soft rise of the material at my buttocks. We swayed together, all 
motion of our feet suspended, until gradually, like the pendulum of a clock 
which has run down, our oscillations grew slighter until they were 
negligible, a slightly tremorous fluctuation, the lower part of our bodies 
set firmly together, and his handsome face hovered above mine in the 
semi-darkness, his dark eyes smiling, and his soft lips approaching mine. 
And then there was only the music, the slow sensual voice of the crooner 
coming to us across the dark room. "It's better with our clothes off," he 
whispered. I laughed softly in his face and led him into one of the 
bedrooms. 

We didn't turn on the light. The music was soft now, in the distance. I 
removed his tie and then stepped back to undress myself. I took off 
everything except the dark nylon stockings and my high-heeled shoes and then 
stepped back against his naked body. His sex rode up towards my navel and 
our thighs mingled with the softness of velvet. We were still dancing when 
the music stopped. We paused, almost without moving, to wait for it to 
begin, our bellies rising and falling against one another, quivering at the 
delicate peeling contact like aspen leaves. I laid my blonde head on his 
shoulder. His strong hands explored all my skin surfaces tenderly. And then 
he tilted my face upward toward him and kissed me, at the same time forcing 
me back, my torso curved and springy as a longbow, against the bed. Its soft 
horizontal bulk caught me exactly at the bend of my knees and, off balance, 
I crumpled giddily backward drawing his hot hard body on top of me. 

At that moment, the music began again. But it came to us from a distance, 
and only intermittently, seeping into the air about us, to be sucked into 
our consciousness of the situation only at those instants at which our 
sexual gyration hung fire, slewed into relief, shadowy flesh transfixed for 
an instant in time, and hushed voices on the deck outside, to merge with a 
suggestive bar of music, urgently, as we whirl pooled down again to become 
the minute electric ebb and flow which caused waves of sexual hunger to pass 
through our quivering flanks and in the end caused such delectable 
devastation at our loins. There Was something massive about that act of 
love. Its force was tidal. The small seismic disturbance in the hollow of my 
belly increased to the force of an avalanche. It transmitted itself to every 
sinew and reigned there like an all-embracing quake, sweet and needling at 
its depth, until every belly and buttock muscle of my big girl's body, all 
the gimbals of my flesh, creaked, broke and croaked in delirious pain, 
indefinitely shadowed by a movement as vast as that of shifting continents. 

Suddenly, in the next room, I heard Nadya laugh softly, and then Devlin's 
voice like the voice of a conspirator. I reached up the bed with my hand, 
turned down the soft sheet, and with a soft, persuasive movement of my body 
encouraged Mario to follow me into it. 

Shortly afterward, another door in the suite closed. As my new lover mounted 
me again, I thought of Nadya's young body knowing a male for the first time. 

"Aren't men wonderful?" Nadya said at breakfast. 

"Are you sure you were careful, darling?" 

She pouted. "Of course I was! Anyone would think I was a child!" 

I smiled. "I just don't want you to have any trouble, that's all." 

"I don't see that it would matter, anyway!" she said rebelliously. "I'd love 
to have Harry's child!" 

"Oh, you would, you little bitch!" I said sweetly. "And what would your 
father say?" 

"Well," she said, "Harry and I could get married, and then papa would be a 
grandfather and he'd like Harry too, I know." 

"Is that what Harry said?" I asked drily. 

"Well, he told me he loved me." 

"That is quite immaterial to me," I said sharply. "Did he say he wanted to 
marry you?" 

"Of course it's too early to tell," Nadya said brightly, "But he hinted at 
it." 

"Oh-huh," I said gently, "I think I'd better speak to Mr. Devlin." 

"You will not! I'll never speak to you again if you do!" 

"You will do just as you're told, my pet," I said calmly. "Otherwise, I'll 
send you straight back to India." 

"You wouldn't dare! You couldn't!" Her lovely features were contorted in 
anger. 

"Listen, Nadya," I said softly, "you can sleep with Harry Devlin to your 
heart's content, but I don't want to hear one word about marriage. Do you 
understand?" 

"Anyone would think he was a leper!" 

"As far as marriage is concerned, he is." 

"What have you got against him? Anyone would think you wanted him for 
yourself!" 

"Think that if you want," I said coolly, "But if you make one move toward 
marriage, I'll take him away from you. Do you understand?" 

"You couldn't!" 

She said it desperately, unable to conceal the fear in her voice. 

"Eat your breakfast, darling," I said. "Why can't you be sensible? There are 
a million better men than Harry in this world." 

"You're just jealous!" she fired back, and rising abruptly, she threw open 
the door and went out on deck. 

Trouble already. That is the difficulty about men like Harry Devlin. They 
cannot make love to a girl without becoming sentimental. Had Nadya slept 
with Mario, there might have been the same problem, but the issues would be 
quite clear. He would be thinking calmly of her money. But with men like 
Devlin it is different. He came obviously of a good family. I suspected that 
he had money but that he was not a millionaire. Such a man does not marry 
for money, but peculiarly often he does marry money. That is to say, while 
consciously he would prohibit the base thought, the knowledge of a girl's 
fortune is the oil upon which a profitable sentimentality slides, and the 
thought that he is marrying money is subtly countered by the knowledge of 
his own worth, his family, his background, his eligibility. That 
eligibility, however-I mean Devlin's eligibility-while it might seem an 
important factor to the spinsters in Boston, was merely funny in relation to 
the Pamandari Empire. For I had discovered that the Pamandari wealth was 
legendary, and the fortune fabulous even in terms of India. The match, 
therefore, was quite impossible. I would have to take measures to prevent 
it. 

When I went on deck, the conspirators were already together, leaning over 
the guardrail in approximately the same position as Mario and I had occupied 
the previous night. When I approached, I could sense the coolness in 
Devlin's manner. They had evidently been discussing me. Things were moving 
quickly. Needless to say, I was angry about the whole thing. In the first 
place I was not accustomed to having men act coolly towards me, and, 
secondly, I had looked forward to a long and pleasant trip with Nadya. The 
trip was now in danger of ending before it had begun. I spoke briefly and 
inconsequentially to them and then went in search of Mario. 

By this time, I had decided that I needed an ally. I could think of no one 
more qualified to aid me in this piece of intrigue than my lover of the 
previous night. I found him in the centre of a group of young American women 
at the swimming pool. At a glance from me, he detached himself from the 
group and came over. "I must talk to you at once," I said. 

He said he would meet me in the bar in five minutes. 

"The trouble with a man of Devlin's type," Mario said smoothly, "is that he 
has an obstinate conviction of his own worth. All problems must be solved in 
relation to that conviction. Now, if you were dealing with a man like 
myself, the problem would be quite different. I, Mario Vassari Ratsonli, 
Hereditary Duke of Veraggio, with more blue blood in my little finger than 
that ape has in his whole body, am as poor as a church mouse. If I were the 
offender, you would only have to say: 'Look here, you Hereditary Duke of 
Veraggio, Mario Vassari Ratsonli, this match is ridiculous. Here are twenty 
thousand dollars. Now take yourself off like a good boy and let's hear no 
more of it.' Et voila! I am gone. But with a Bostonian of Devlin's type, the 
aristocratic tiara is too new and of too doubtful an origin for him to come 
down off his high-horse quickly. For, being essentially a democratic 
aristocrat, a queer fish altogether, he might find it impossible to remount 
his horse again! Unlike mine, his title to aristocracy ends when his honour 
is compromised-ha ha! This is indeed a queer type of aristocracy! But we 
must treat it seriously, yes, or the consequences may be very serious." 

"What do you suggest?" 

"Is the girl in love?" 

"She's got hot pants, if that's what you mean." 

"And of course it's very romantic! But her position is from our point of 
view both advantageous and disadvantageous. This is what I mean. She is 
spoiled, romantic, and obvious, but it is my guess that she has, unlike him, 
not a moral fibre in her body, yes?" 

"Correct." 

"Very well. Then, in that case she would not listen to a word against him. 
She would be very obstinate in her defense of him. But, having no morals, 
she is very vulnerable in another way." 

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean that I might be able to seduce her." 

"What good will that do?" 

"Ha! there you have it! Perhaps, if there were only her to consider, no good 
at all. But do you not see that it would be the end as far as Devlin was 
concerned? It would touch his honour. He would think no more of marriage. If 
he were I, yes, it would make no difference; he would be after the money. 
But as that is only, shall we say an 'afterthought' with him, it would be 
the end. He would never marry a nymphomaniac." 

"And that's precisely what she is." 

"Of course, and we have only to prove it to him!" 

"Do you think you can manage it?" 

He hesitated. "It would mean, I fear, cutting myself off entirely from your 
society for the rest of the trip." 

"Well, that's all right." 

"Ah, but it will be very painful for me!" 

"I will write you a check for the equivalent of two thousand dollars if you 
succeed." 

"Three thousand," he said quickly, "There will be certain little 
expenses...." 

We agreed upon it. As he kissed my hand, I said "And don't try anything with 
her yourself." He smiled charmingly: 

"You can trust me," he said, "I'm a venal man." 

By the time we had passed through the Suez Canal, Nadya and Harry Devlin 
were no longer on speaking terms. Mario had accomplished his task 
efficiently and with little apparent effort. 

It was about this time that Devlin began to show signs of having an interest 
in me. The poor young man seemed to be determined to fall in love. I found 
him handsome enough but wished to keep him as far as possible out of Nadya's 
sight. I felt that if she could be alone with him for half an hour he might 
swallow his pride and make a nuisance of himself again. 

Meeting Mario on deck one day, he took me aside. He had some information for 
me, he said. We went to the bar and took a seat in the corner. There, over a 
drink, he explained to me that, although Nadya was sleeping with him, she 
had confessed to him that she was still in love with Devlin and had asked 
him to help her to win him back. This information determined my course of 
action. I would have to ensnare Devlin myself. We had already rounded the 
heel of Italy and were making for Marseilles where Nadya and I were 
scheduled to disembark and catch the train for Paris. Devlin, as it 
happened, was catching the same train. As I knew from my own experience, 
anything might happen during a corridor meeting. 

I explained my plan to Mario. It required him to travel to Paris with Nadya 
and remain there for at least three weeks. He was to see to it that Nadya 
didn't form any new and equally ridiculous attachments. In return, I offered 
to pay him seven hundred dollars a week plus expenses. I, meanwhile, would 
elope with Devlin, carry him off to somewhere on the French Riviera, and 
join Mario and Nadya in Paris as soon as possible. Mario was delighted with 
the idea. He had begun to realize that I held the purse-strings of Nadya's 
entourage, and without being immodest, I believe he was looking forward to 
the day when we could take up intimacy again at the point at which we had 
left off. Nadya's childishness had begun to bore him. Once again we parted 
and once again he assured me in a charming voice that I could have 
confidence in his venal nature. As we walked round a deserted part of the 
deck, he took me in his arms, kissed me on the lips and said: "Don't be 
long, Helen." 

I returned immediately to our suite where I sat down and wrote a long letter 
to Mr. Pamandari. I described in detail the events of the voyage, the 
reasons for the apparent desertion which would take place at Marseilles. I 
ended saying that I hoped to join Nadya within three weeks at Paris and that 
meanwhile I felt that Mario, a kind of male counterpart of myself, could be 
trusted as long as he was paid to look after his daughter's interest. If, 
however, something prevented me from telegramming him within three weeks, 
Mr. Pamandari should himself look into matters as they concerned his 
daughter. I signed the letter affectionately and posted it at the ship's 
post office. 

 CHAPTER TEN 

We were separated yesterday evening. Veiled, I was led out across the 
courtyard between walls ringing with the white sun and transported in a 
closed donkey cart across the town. I saw little of it and cannot even guess 
at the size of it. The building into which I was led is located somewhere 
near the market. Men and donkeys loaded with fruits were turning a comer 
nearby and from that direction came the usual market sounds, the guttural 
voices, an occasional shout and the cries of whipped beasts. Up a flight of 
wooden stairs, through a door and into a long passage. They left me in this 
room at the end of the corridor. The shadows grew longer towards evening. 
From the slit window I could see the last reflection of the sun on the 
uneven planes of the roofs. The strains of pipe and zither music rose from 
somewhere below. A muezzin was crying in a weird singing voice from a 
minaret. It soon became dark in the room. 

The bed is quite comfortable, broad enough for two. 

A short while afterward, a fat Arab woman entered. She grinned at me. Her 
teeth protruded slightly, and she had one gold one. She carried a small 
oil-lamp which she left on the table. She handed a small bowl to me. It 
contained a mixture which seemed to be of crushed almonds and honey. "Gut!" 
she said in pidgin English, rolling her eyes and rubbing her fat paunch with 
the flat of her hand. I tasted the mixture. It was very pleasant, slightly 
gritty and seemed to cause my mouth to tingle a little. "Gut!" she repeated 
with a broad smile. Evidently she was going to remain there until I had 
finished it. I did so, but quite slowly, partly because the mixture was so 
sweet and partly because with each successive swallow my stomach tightened, 
again not unpleasantly, but I found myself breathing more heavily. As I 
finished the mess in the bowl I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. Some 
unknown force seemed to have taken control of my body. I could feel the 
blood push its way through my veins, my heart seemed to be pounding, and I 
was involved deliciously and completely in a hypersensitive world of 
feeling. "Gut?" she said. I nodded vaguely and she went out. 

After she had gone I realized that I had been drugged. My body attained a 
terrible immediacy of consciousness. If I touched my thigh, it quivered and 
prickled. I had an urge to bare my belly and watch it rise and fall beyond 
all knowledge of breathing. The very atmosphere seemed to have weight. It 
lay on my sensitized skin like an invisible hand. My temples were throbbing. 
A vast expansion was taking place inside me. I tore off my clothes and lay 
naked on the bed. In the vast, eddying whirlpool of my sensations I lost all 
consciousness of time. My very breathing afforded me a sexual pleasure. When 
I touched my mound with my fingertips the acuteness of my pleasure almost 
caused a spasm, or rather, the sensation was as deliriously brittle as an 
ordinary spasm, but below, suppurating like a vast nuclear potential, the 
actual spasm lay in wait, willing blindly to be stimulated. On the other 
hand, my mind appeared to be unaffected. I saw clearly that I had been 
drugged for one purpose. For this reason I fought and quenched the desire to 
precipitate the spasm myself. Instead, I contented myself with brushing the 
skin of my belly and thighs with my fingertips, and felt my buttocks heave 
and thrill with an almost unbearably ecstatic sensation. Soon I gave way to 
an urge toward unconsciousness and seemed to hang impotently between two 
worlds, heedless of direction. A prickling seizure mounted in the 
extremities of my limbs, rising gradually and deliriously through every 
fleshy drain till it lay like steel bands of paralysis at my thighs and 
armpits. I found myself unable to move a muscle, my consciousness wheeling 
farther and farther backwards toward utter extinction. At the same time, by 
thinking casually of my genitals, I hung ecstatically in the balance, a 
knife of pleasure to its hilt in my sex. This led to the realisation that my 
throat muscles were not constricted and I uttered a hoarse sob of lust. My 
eyelids were tightly closed, lead-weight, and I lacked the strength to open 
them. I became, except for the palest eidolon of consciousness, a seamy and 
pullulating furrow, dark and warm as dark earth awaiting the sprinkle of 
seed. Vaguely, through the misted vision of this hothouse paralysis, I heard 
the door open. A bearded man was bending over me. 

As he lowered his naked front on top of me, my bodily reactions were beyond 
my control. I had the sensation of being a voracious gullet which had been 
starved for a score of centuries. As his dark member entered me every hair 
on my bristling body partook of the pleasure. It is impossible to express in 
any word known to man the impossible peak of pleasure to which his sex 
transported me. On one level, my vital juices rose up within my belly like 
the waters of a dam of infinite capacity. I thought it would never end. 
Literally, no matter how high the waters rose, the limiting walls of 
potentiality towered massively above. On another level, I experienced a 
thousand spasms each minute at every pore. On a third and more dispassionate 
level I was conscious at every moment of the marvellous soft texture of his 
skin, or the fibrous strength of his short hairs, and of the voluptuous 
putty-like quality of his tongue. Towards the end, however, I passed out of 
personality entirely. I became a vessel which threatened and willed at any 
moment to burst. That burst, when it finally did come, was the most 
excruciating thing I have ever experienced. If giving birth were 
pleasant-perhaps it could be-I would compare it to that. The excessive 
difficulty of the orgasm, the final frantic lurch of the hips in their 
ecstasy-these things are beyond description. The sting of the reality cannot 
be contained in words. What, under normal circumstances can be compared with 
an extremely pleasurable shifting of sands in the womb, became, for a 
seemingly endless space of time, a vast broiling cauldron of shooting 
planets. The universe itself suffered annihilation within my womb, and when 
my limbs, their soft surfaces, swung back into consciousness it was in the 
sureness and certainty of an utter and oblivious peace. 

The man, whoever he was, left as silently as he had come. I lay alone, 
sweating profusely, and too contented to move. Some time later, another man 
came. The vast convulsion began all over again. And again, for I counted six 
others before dawn broke out like a disease on the epidermis of the sky. 

It is after noon. I have struggled hard to write what I have written. It 
seems rather pointless now. But I am so near the end of my story, so near 
the point at which my leaving Marseilles merges with my present life, that 
it would be a pity not to go on. 

I was fed a short while ago. The same fat woman. The food more succulent 
than that which I have been used to. Stewed lamb and eggplants. Some kind of 
rich honeyed pastry afterwards. I rubbed my stomach as the woman did last 
night, made motion of eating from the small bowl and said: "Gut?" 
questioningly. She laughed with her broad mouth, smacked her large belly, 
and nodded comprehendingly and said "Ya ya ya ya ya ya!" over and over 
again. I am sure she means I will have more of the mixture tonight. And so 
meanwhile I shall go on with my story. 

But it is difficult to concentrate. My imagination is held by her broad 
friendly mouth saying "Ya ya ya ya ya ya!" 

Devlin sat facing me. The train had just pulled out of Toulon on its way to 
that string of pleasure-spots which constitutes the French Riviera: St. 
Tropez, St. Raphael, Cannes, Juan les Pins, Antibes, Nice, and so on to 
Monte Carlo. We had taken tickets as far as Ventimiglia because in the haste 
of our departure we had been unable to decide the exact location of our 
"honeymoon." We had eloped. Pretending to have business to do in Marseilles, 
we had left Nadya in Mario company, secured our suitcases, and boarded the 
first train of the Cote d' Azur. 

Devlin was in high spirits. We were both, I believe, almost as excited as 
newly-weds. We had never slept together, and this was in fact a kind of 
honeymoon. The excitement was heightened by the fact that we had as yet not 
decided upon our destination, and, as we left each station behind us, unable 
at the last moment to make up our minds to get off, we experienced a feeling 
of loss almost, for perhaps we should have got off at St. Tropez, or at 
Cannes, or at Antibes. How were we to know? By the time we reached Nice, we 
were both feeling a little desperate, but neither one of us was willing to 
make the necessary decision to get off. Thus we found ourselves running 
along the coast past Villefranche, St. Jean Cap Ferrat, Eze, Cap d'Ail in 
the direction of Monaco. At Monaco station, Devlin finally took action. 

"Let's get the bags," he said. "We'll get off at Monte Carlo. It's about two 
minutes. If we don't, we'll find ourselves in Italy!" 

Laughing, I helped him down with the bags, and a few minutes later the 
porters were bundling our luggage on to a taxi. 

We took rooms at the Hotel de P ... , bathed, and walked out of the 
luxurious foyer on to the square. 

"That's the Casino," Devlin said, pointing to the Christmas cake-like 
structure, that obscured our view of the sea. "Gambling is one of my vices. 
We'll go there this evening. Later, we'll go to the Sporting Club, it's a 
bit more chic. The old Casino's become rather a bam since the First World 
War." 

Devlin was a mine of information, and his happy and very shy American manner 
endeared him to me. 

I thought little of the fact that our presence here was part of a 
complicated plan to protect Nadya from him. I accepted the present moment 
and luxuriated in it. We were sitting on the terrace of the pleasant cafe 
that looks on to the Casino square gardens. 

"Fabulous things have happened in that Casino," he said, shaking his head. 

Later in the afternoon, we visited the tropical aquarium, the gardens, drove 
around the town in an open carriage, did, in fact, all the things which a 
young honeymoon couple would have done, dined well at our own hotel and 
ended the evening at the Casino where Devlin lost a few hundred dollars at 
roulette. 

That night, slightly tipsy and inspired by all the silly things we had done 
during the day, we lay naked in one another's arms, like a pair of 
newly-weds, sleeping only when the first light broke through our window. 

Looking back, that was the only entirely happy day we spent in each other's 
company. 

As the days passed Devlin drank more and more. He had been losing heavily at 
the Casino. On the third night he lost $25,000. He kept repeating that it 
wasn't serious, that he could afford it, but he drank more and by the end of 
the first week he was going to the Casino at ten o'clock in the morning when 
it opened. Several times, I tried to get him to cut his losses, but he grew 
unbearably bad-tempered and began to blame me for ill-luck. 

"If you don't want to come with me, then for God's sake stay in the hotel! 
Do you think a man can gamble when there's someone looking over his shoulder 
watching every move he makes? Stay in the hotel, Goddamn you, and leave me 
alone!" 

I did so for two nights, but he lost more heavily than ever, returning 
completely drunk to our room in the early hours of the morning. I tried to 
encourage him to leave Monte Carlo. 

The third night we went out together. We walked silently away from the 
Casino. He had obviously no wish to go there with me. And yet I felt he was 
quite glad to have my company. 

I had a sudden brainwave. 

"Let's drive to Nice tonight," I said, "It'll do you good to get away from 
here for a few hours." He was immediately eager. "We'll hire a car," he 
said. 

It was still light. We drove along the Moyenne Corniche with the 
Mediterranean down below us to the left, exposed suddenly between rocks and 
villas, glimmering blue-grey patches of darkening sea. Devlin was driving 
and he didn't speak much. He pointed out an occasional villa whose owner he 
knew or had read about. 

"Some people live here all the year round," he said, "but that type usually 
hasn't much money. Nice is different. It's also a city." 

We descended at last, ran quickly through Nice to the sea front and drove 
slowly along the Promenade des Anglais. We came to a halt opposite a side 
street whose discreet neon bar signs stretched backwards in the near 
darkness towards the old city. 

"A drink?" 

I nodded. "Park the car, anyway," I said. 

A moment later we entered a softly lighted bar and sat in one comer at the 
back. 

Three single women were sitting at the bar. They were dressed rather 
daringly in unfashionable evening dresses, cut low to expose a naked expanse 
of back. Their legs, their heavy thighs smooth under silk, dangled 
indolently from high stools. They glanced at us occasionally. Two of them 
were not remarkable in any way, women merely, like taxis waiting, over a 
small drink, for whatever men might enter. But the third, though obviously a 
prostitute also, was different. Her curves were softer than those of the 
other two who were almost hard in their angularity. She had richly flowing 
black hair which sprouted out of a low and startlingly white forehead. Her 
fleshly face, with its big lips and high cheekbones, was , I felt, softly 
desirable, as the warm breadth of her hips certainly was, and the heavy but 
well-shaped flesh of her arms. Devlin, I could see, was obviously attracted 
by her. She glanced at us more than the other two, almost inviting us to 
call her over. 

"What about it?" I said to Devlin with a smile. 

He pretended not to understand. 

"What about what?" he said. 

"That woman," I said. "We could take her to a hotel." He flushed. "We?" 

"Of course," I said. "You don't expect me to wait for you, do you?" 

"Who said anything about her?" Devlin said. 

"That woman," I said. "We could take her to bed with you!" 

Devlin laughed. "I think you're exaggerating!" 

"Well, you'd like to anyway." As he didn't deny it, I went on. "And she's 
just the right build. She'd make love very smoothly. It'd be a pleasure to 
watch her." 

"Now we're getting at the truth," Devlin said with a smile. 

"Let's call her over." 

"You're sure?" 

"Of course I am," I said. 

I watched Devlin make what was meant to be a discreet but what turned out to 
be a very obvious gesture. 

Smiling, the woman slipped down off the stool and approached us with a 
voluptuous walk. The other two looked at us almost with contempt, but I held 
their eyes and theirs were lowered first. 

"Hullo!" you want something?" said the big girl who confronted us. 

"Won't you join us in a drink?" Devlin said with his most attractive smile. 

"I like to very much," the woman replied. 

Devlin seated her and called the waiter. The woman wanted whisky and soda. 
It was brought to her. 

"You are on holiday?" 

"We're on our honeymoon," I said with a smile. The woman didn't seen the 
least put out. "I have many friends on their honeymoon," she said 
ambiguously, for she didn't speak much English. 

"In that case you will know roughly what we want," I said suggestively. 

"Roughly? I don't understand roughly...." said the woman, somewhat 
nervously. 

Devlin laughed. "C'est-a-dire, rien," he said in his best French. 

"Rien? Comment rien?" 

Devlin waved his hand in the air as though to erase what had been said. 

"Elle vous a demande," he said slowly, "si vous savez faire comme il faut." 
He ended his sentence with a vague motion of the hand. 

"Moi!" said the big girl with a broad smile, "mais bien sur!" 

"Because if you don't," I said with a smile, "you're going to learn!" 

"Ah wee!" said the girl, "I teach you. No worry!" 

We were all smiling at one another. The girl said to Devlin: "She is very 
beautiful, your wife." 

"But he's going to enjoy you all the same," I said. 

"Aren't you, Harry?" 

"What she say?" said the girl. 

"Elle a dit que tu es belle aussi," Devlin said. 

"Ah oui, moil" said the girl bursting into laughter. 

"Look at all that flesh, Harry," I said cruelly. "Aren't you just dying to 
knead it in your hands?" 

"It was your idea," he said, somewhat hurt. 

I laughed. "Yes, I know it was, darling. I'm just dying to see you mount 
her!" 

"I'm not so sure it's a good idea," he said pompously. 

"What he say?" the girl said. "He says it's time we started," I said. 
"Good," the girl said. "I got hotel. You come with me. 

Harry paid up silently and followed us out. 

"I do for many honeymoons copples," said the girl as we walked through the 
revolving door into the street. "They all have very good time!" 

I put my arm round her waist. "I'm sure they do," I said. 

Harry followed a few paces behind, like a scolded dog. 

I watched the girl's superb buttocks mount the narrow stairs in front of me, 
glossy and full of promise as ripe melons, and I imagined her then and there 
opening her thighs for a man, and, like a ripe melon from which a large 
slice had been extracted, she was at that part hung with a wet and ambiguous 
core, her clung seam voracious between her widening knees. And there indeed 
she was after a few moments, after she had taken Devlin. 

A moment later, Devlin came through from the cabinet. He was naked except 
for his socks and obviously embarrassed. 

"Come, make me warm!" the girl said. "Your wife watch just now." 

With a last glance, almost of hatred, toward me, Devlin laid himself down 
close to the woman's gleaming chops. When she laughed, the voluptuous 
heaviness of her belly quivered. She reached out and drew him toward her. 
His reluctant body arched and then fell passively against her. She wrapped 
him in her folds and with softly muttered words inspired a slight rotary 
movement at his hips. She grunted as though with pleasure, allowed her thick 
dark head into the cabinet, and returned in her various body garters to set 
herself like a goblet of lust on the bed. She was fatter, the flesh thicker, 
than I had expected. She fell backwards on to the pillow, and, cupping him 
in her hands at the buttocks, urged him forward toward his passion. Then she 
allowed her head to roll sideways like a doll's, his face buried in her 
neck, and she looked up at me and said throatily: "It wonderful!" 

I smiled. The woman was obviously bored. But that, after all, was what she 
was paid for. I moved forward and knelt beside the bed, watching closely the 
increasing wetness as the hairs of his belly combed hers, voluptuously with 
a ripple at the meeting of muscles. I couldn't resist what I did next. I 
slid one hand in between the oiled heat of their bodies, searching between 
two glowing brows of hair for the rising masticity, and found it, with the 
delicate hooks of my fingers, pleasant to stimulate, the woman breathing 
harder under my experienced touch, and the flat bouncing wall of my lover 
almost frantic now to bring about its assertion. 

But how for me? 

Swiftly, I removed all my clothes and threw myself naked beside them. I had 
to prize my knee between them to separate them, my thigh as it moved between 
the slickness of their sweat wedging them apart. I was concerned now only 
with my own urgency. But I had counted without the strength of Devlin's 
desire. He was beyond thought. His one desire was to be sucked right into 
the pit of his bought woman. He had no time for me. He grasped me at the 
knee and prised my leg outward again, causing his belly to meet again in a 
hot flap with the dark girl's. Her thighs were now working like pistons. 

I struck backward, wet a towel under the tap, and, using it as a whip, I 
struck the pair again as they rolled about the bed. But my blows only made 
them more passionate and finally, in disgust, I hurled the towel aside. At 
that moment, his whole frame quivering, Devlin uttered a groan of 
fulfillment. The prostitute, with the slickness of an electric light switch, 
became business-like. She slipped from underneath him, and, grinning at me, 
walked over toward the cabinet. Devlin lay with his face buried in the 
pillow. 

"What about me?" I said angrily. 

He didn't answer. I crossed to the door and threw it open. As it happened, 
coming down the stairs was a negro soldier. When he saw me naked at the door 
he stopped and grinned. I beckoned to him to follow me. I lay down on the 
other bed and opened my arms to the unknown man. He took in the situation at 
a glance, grinned, and, a moment later, was at me with his hard core. All 
the while I groaned with passion and pleasure. Devlin watched, his head on 
one cheek on the pillow, but his obvious horror only acted as a catalyst to 
my delicate lust. And, a few moments later when the prostitute returned 
fully dressed, I felt the delicious shift at my vital centre and I slid 
softly like a tadpole's moving into my delirium. 

As I returned to my senses, the woman was hooting with laughter, and Devlin, 
already dressed was disappearing through the doorway. What a bore! I 
remember thinking. By the time I had extricated myself from the clutches of 
my negro lover, Devlin was completely gone, that's to say the car was gone 
from the place we had parked it. 

More bored than angry, I returned to Monte Carlo by taxi. 

We made it up the following day, but he was already back in the clutches of 
his gambling mania. Things had gone too far. 

'I'll try once more, Helen. I promise, that'll be the last time. Only you 
come with me tonight." 

I agreed, happy that he seemed to be coming to his senses. We arrived in the 
Casino after dinner toward 10 o'clock at night. He wrote a check for $I,000 
and began to play roulette. I watched him play an indecisive game for some 
time, winning and losing, winning and losing, being slightly down after the 
first half hour. 

I noticed that many of the habitu's, that breed of human being which lingers 
on at Monte Carlo, having come there and lost everything or almost 
everything before 1914, the person who bets approximately the same number of 
francs as he did half a century ago and pretends not to notice that the 
currency has depreciated. They took a vicarious pleasure in watching the 
undulations of Devlin's fortune, sharing his small triumphs and sneakingly 
triumphant at his sudden misfortunes. Old gentlemen with white hair, clad 
dapperly in moth-eaten black suits, old women in unfashionable evening 
dresses, supporting gaudy strings of artificial pearls, and fixing a tense 
face, built up of layers of powder and rouge, on the spinning wheel. I 
suppose they recognized in Devlin a compatriot, that is to say "a born 
loser," a man who is going to win, but always tomorrow, and were fascinated 
by the familiar ritual of a man on his way to destitution. I thought I 
glimpsed a certain sadness, a certain reluctance to take this young man's 
money, in the eyes of the croupiers. As he became more reckless-they had 
watched him now for over a week-their faces assumed a wooden 
unexpressiveness. As I turned away to go to the bar, I caught the eye of an 
old lady who was sniffing eau-de-Cologne in her handkerchief. Her eyes left 
the ambiguous blur of the spinning wheel, and as she looked at me almost-I 
felt with a shiver-with a gleam of lust in her watery eyes, her bird's head 
seemed to nod in a kind of occult sympathy with the clock-clock-clock-clock 
of the settling ball. 

I walked quickly away in the direction of the bar. 

In my haste, I walked at full tilt into a young man in a white dinner 
jacket. He apologized profusely and I found him leading me into the bar. 

Over our drinks he introduced himself as Youssef.... 

The family name of this personage has been suppressed for official reasons. 

He was some kind of sheikh. His yacht, he said, was in the bay. At any other 
time I would have been fascinated by the dark good looks of this young Arab, 
but at that moment, I could think of little else but of Devlin's madness. 
Ten minutes later, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my lover pass across 
the floor of the next room and return a moment later with hands and pockets 
stuffed with large chips. He had obviously been to cash another check. 

"The young American," Youssef said, "you are his friend?" 

I nodded. 

"It is a great pity," he said, shaking his head. "I have watched him now for 
over a week. He has lost a small fortune." 

"Do you play yourself?" 

"Sometimes, when I feel I'm on a lucky streak. I actually win. But it takes 
a certain amount of discipline." 

I didn't reply. 

"Have another drink," he said kindly, "It will make you feel better. He is 
not your husband?" 

"No." 

"I'm glad of that, for there is little you can do." 

"About his gambling?" He nodded. 

About midnight, Devlin lurched into the bar. He was as pale as a ghost. He 
glanced for a moment at us and then strode over to the bar. He drank a 
number of brandies, one after the other. I made to get up and go over to him 
but Youssef restrained me. 

"It's better not," he said. "He'll come when he's ready." 

Five minutes later Devlin came. 

He looked at the Arab with something approaching a look of hate. 

"Are you with him or with me?" he snapped. 

Youssef stood up apologetically. "Please sit down, sir. I was merely keeping 
the lady company until you returned." 

"Blow, wog!" Devlin said coarsely. 

"Harry!" 

"And you shut your damn little mouth!" Youssef was staring dangerously at 
Devlin's drunken face. 

"I thought I told you to blow?" 

"I will leave in my own good time," the Arab said with an effort. "To lose 
is stupid, but to lose badly is disgusting." 

"Oh, you think so, do you?" Devlin leered, "Well, I'll let you into a little 
secret. Your opinion doesn't concern me, wog! Savvy? Speakada Inglees?" 

The sheikh controlled himself. "If you hadn't already lost your fortune as 
well as your manners," he began.... 

Devlin laughed hoarsely. "What do you know about it? You want to play for 
high stakes, you perfumed camel-man?" 

"Don't play with him, Youssef!" I cried. 

"Don't play with him!" mimicked Devlin, and then he turned to me, "You keep 
out of this you bitch! Just ... keep ... your ... trap ... shut!" 

"I believe we are staying at the same hotel," Youssef said calmly. "My suite 
is on the first floor." He turned to me, "Good night, mademoiselle." 

"If you go to his rooms, I shall leave you," I said after the sheikh had 
gone. 

"What was the proverb about the rats?" Devlin asked into the air as he made 
his way over to the bar for another drink. 

At 3 a.m., I sat up later in our room, waiting for Devlin to return. For the 
first time in my life I was certain, absolutely certain, of my own motives. 
I wanted to leave him because I disliked him. I found it difficult to 
forgive his coarse insults. At the same time, his remark about the rats 
affected me deeply. It was true that he had lost a great deal of money, more 
than he could afford, and now I was quite certain that he was on the first 
floor in Youssef's suite. If I was any judge of character, it would be 
Devlin who would lose. It was this reluctance to desert him when he was down 
that caused me to await his return. I had smoked almost a packet of 
cigarettes since returning to the room. 

When he came in, he was paler than before but apparently sober. He flopped 
down on an armchair without a word and stared at the carpet. I fixed him a 
drink and carried it across to him. He took it quietly. A moment later he 
said: 

"I'm finished, Helen." 

His voice sounded so small and pathetic that I ran over to his side and sat 
on the floor beside his chair. He ran his fingers through my hair. 

"I've written checks for over $100,000 at the Casino," he said slowly, "and 
as for that damn Arab, he has my notes for more than $120,000. God knows 
whether I've got that amount of money in the world!" 

"Oh, Harry! Look, darling, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll speak to 
Youssef. I'll get him to give you your notes back." 

"You'll do no such thing! I'd rather die." 

"Don't be a fool, Harry!" 

"Good God, do you think I could let you do that after the way I insulted 
him?" 

"You could apologize." 

"To him?" 

"I think you're being foolish, Harry." 

"You want me to go creeping on my knees to him?" 

"If necessary yes!" 

"You'll wait a long time and more for that!" 

"I don't think it would be necessary. I'm sure he would give the notes to 
me." 

"I'll see him in hell first!" 

I shrugged hopelessly, walked across to the mantelpiece and lit a cigarette. 

"What do you intend to do?" 

"I've been thinking, Helen," he said eagerly. 

"It's about time," I answered drily. 

"Don't be like that, Helen! What's done's done. As for the future, that all 
depends on you." 

"How?" 

"I shall have to go back to the States and get a job." 

"Well?" 

"I want you to come with me," he said eagerly. "We'll be poor for a while 
but we'll make out somehow. If only you'll come with me...." 

"That's out of the question." I tried to say it as gently as possible but he 
looked as though I had struck him on the face. 

"What do you mean, 'out of the question'?" 

"Just that, Harry. I won't go with you." 

"Am I so repulsive all of a sudden?" he sneered. 

"You're not repulsive at all, at least not now you aren't. The point is that 
I'm not in love with you and, anyway, I wouldn't make a good poor man's 
wife." 

"So you're going to walk out on me?" 

"That's hardly a fair way to put it. I'll do as much as I can. I'll stay 
with you for a few weeks if it will help. I could let you have a few 
thousand dollars." 

"Conscience money!" 

"You've no right to talk that way, Harry! You brought it all on yourself." I 
had been about to say, "You've had your fling," but I didn't have the heart 
to. 

"Are you walking out on me or aren't you?" 

"I've already answered that question." 

"Very well," he said bitterly. He was looking pale and drawn. He got up and 
walked through into the other bedroom. I sat down unsteadily on the arm of 
the chair he had vacated. I wasn't feeling altogether hopeless about 
Devlin's situation because I felt sure that Youssef would return the notes 
to me. As far as the Casino losses were concerned, there was nothing we 
could do. Devlin wasn't a Russian Admiral and he had no fleet anchored in 
the bay. And anyway, perhaps only a Russian could have acted in such a 
swashbuckling manner. 

I stood up. There was no point in wasting time. I would go at once to see 
Youssef. Devlin would undoubtedly feel better when he had cut his losses by 
more than half. But as I walked toward the door a loud explosion took place 
in the next room. I froze momentarily and then, with a wild cry, threw 
myself toward the bedroom. 

Horrified, I was standing staring at the corpse which a few minutes ago had 
been a live and passionate man. I was shivering with terror, rooted to the 
spot, when I felt a hand take me at the elbow. It was Youssef. 

"The young fool!" he said, looking down at the lifeless body. "I was just on 
my way to give him the notes back." 

"It will not be necessary for you to go ashore again," Youssef said as he 
approached me along the deck. 

Shortly after the suicide, he had spirited me on board his yacht and I was 
standing on the quarterdeck looking at the ghostly early-morning outline of 
the prince's castle at Monaco. 

"The police are quite satisfied that it is a clear case of suicide. I asked 
for you to be excused to avoid publicity. They were quite understanding 
about it." I thanked him. 

"Why did he do it?" Youssef said suddenly. "What do you mean?" 

He laughed nervously. "I mean, did he say anything to you? give you any 
indication?" 

"None whatsoever. I told him I wouldn't marry him and he got angry and said 
I was running out on him." 

"Were you?" 

"It was hardly like that. I offered to stay with him for a while." 

"But he must obviously have blamed you for his suicide, I mean he did it to 
impress you." 

"I don't see how you can say that! I wouldn't marry him and go and live in 
America with him. But surely that was no reason for him to go and shoot 
himself." 

"I think it probably was his reason." 

"And what about you? It was you who ruined him!" 

"We were both to blame, perhaps," Youssef said gently. 

"Or neither of us. he was mad. I told him you would give him his notes back. 
I was just coming to you when I heard the shot." 

"A post-mortem won't help anyway," Youssef said. "Look, Helen, we're both of 
us upset about this. Why don't we get out of here, now, this minute? A 
couple of weeks holiday would do you the world of good." 

"Where?" 

"North Africa," he said. "We can make for Algiers." 

"For two weeks?" 

"As long as you care to come for," he said, looking into my eyes. 

"Yes, I think I'd like that," I said finally. 

Half an hour later the sleek white yacht slipped quietly out of the harbor 
into the Mediterranean. 

 CHAPTER ELEVEN 

I have not added anything to my account for over a week. I have seldom been 
able to isolate the desire. It has existed as the consciousness of something 
left undone in the kaleidoscopic matrix of my feelings, like a patch, an 
imperfection on a quilt, which, with the passage of time, comes to blend 
with the material of the quilt until in the end, except to close scrutiny, 
it is imperceptible. 

God knows my original desire was strong enough. I felt I must put into words 
the teeming mass of experience I have lived through. At the beginning, there 
was a distinct desire for revenge against Youssef, who, to resolve the guilt 
on his own conscience, thrust my present life upon me. Intellectually, that 
desire still exists, but it is a mere shadow, bloodless, unlived as a 
textbook recommendation. And gradually the whole desire to commit my 
experiences to history has been outflanked by the terrible pleasure I 
experience in approaching the unconscious state of an object, an amorphous 
mass of sensitive flesh and fibre without the form of will. It is indeed 
doubtful whether I can still usefully use the word "I." Certainly the 
governing vision that in the past I used to identify with yourself has grown 
so dim during most of my "waking" hours as not to be a personality at all. I 
have lusted as it were to melt out of myself, to become the anonymous and 
vibrant spasm which the regular application of drugs-hashish I believe-has 
made me. I am indescribably lazy. Breathing itself is such a pleasant 
effort! The vague and exciting apprehension of the nights when my unknown 
lovers will visit me, ramming their hard and lustful bodies against the soft 
willingness which is my shuddering flesh, that apprehension is for the most 
part the only "thought" which occupies my consciousness. And even that--I 
have only to close my eyes and sigh to experience an ecstatic tumescence at 
the core of my belly and to send minute ripples of tingling pleasures across 
the broad plains of my peerless skin. 

I am Narcissus. I look into the water and find myself beautiful, indeed, the 
only beauty. The comings and goings of my "lovers" are merely the gentle 
showers which nurture the plant. And the plant is myself, living on and on 
with a slow stirring motion through nights and days and nights and days of 
voluptuousness. 

What an effort it is to write this! I yawn. I clap my hand to that vast bud 
of sex which is strapped like a sweetly odoriferous gully between my 
mountainous thighs. I experience an earthquake. I laugh a deep laugh of 
mammal content, a laugh which I do not recognise as the superficial titter 
which in the past was evoked by an amusing situation. No. This is the laugh 
of flesh which has inherited the earth. Oh God, what an ecstasy! 

Food? Its taste is very pleasant, but it is rather an effort to eat it. All 
I eat willingly and without reservation is the exotic mouth-ringing mixture 
of honey and almonds and.... 

I seem to be getting farther and farther away from the conclusion of my 
story. I think: "I must begin now. 

An hour or two is all that is necessary. Now. Get the paper. See, it is 
still light outside. See, there is the market place over here. In the 
distance. How bright the colours are in their haze! A heat-haze I suppose. 
And the buildings startlingly white.... 

But what was I trying to say? The warmth comes up to me from the street. 
Where am I? I am sitting again on the bed. I am clenching my teeth. I am 
trying to concentrate. Yes. I am on a yacht.... 

... arriving at Algiers. 

"You'll love the desert, Helen!" Youssef whispered. His dark, handsome face 
appeared behind me in the mirror, tilted forwards as his lips sought my bare 
neck. 

I had been dressing. I was standing in my panties and my brassiere in front 
of the long mirror fastening my long sheer nylon stockings to my garter belt 
in preparation for going ashore. 

"You're keeping me back," I laughed. "Why don't you be a good boy and look 
out of the port hole?" 

"When I can look at you?" His soft lips moved deliriously at the soft skin 
of my shoulder. 

"Is that what you call 'looking'?" 

"Looking, feeling, kissing, loving," he said, holding me backwards against 
him so that the firm rounds of my buttocks were warm and close at his groin. 
"What a beautiful body you've got, Helen!" 

"Thank you, sir, But if you want me to see this beautiful desert of yours 
you'd better allow me to dress." 

"I don't want you to dress," he said. "I'd like you to be naked, always. 
Naked and hot." 

"I'm always hot. Sometimes it's not possible to be naked." 

He laughed and bit me playfully on the shoulder. "You're a hot bitch!" 

"Hot I certainly am, and bitch I may be, but I don't see the necessity for 
the conjunction. And now, dear Sheikh, please step back while I put my skirt 
on." 

He did so, sat on a chair watching me dress and lit a cigarette. 

"Will I see a mirage?" I said. 

"What do you want with a mirage?" 

"Nothing particularly. I was just trying to make pleasant conversation with 
a native." 

"Bitch!" 

"Sheikh!" 

"Tart!" 

"Camel boy!" 

"Oh Helen!" He had stood up again and was now crushing his lips against 
mine. He moved backwards with me to the bunk laying the top half of my body 
on top of it. Then, with his right hand, and with the careless effort of a 
man who can afford anything, he ripped, literally tore, my web-like panties 
from my loins. 

"What do you think you're doing?" I said playfully. 

"I'm going to f ... you!" 

"Again?" 

He answered me in fact, penetrating my warm sheath in the same buccaneering 
fashion. Our movements were quick and passionate. As his passion rose into 
me, there was a discreet knock on the door. 

"Da ... amn!" he said breathlessly. "We've arrived!" 

"You have indeed," I said drily. "And now would you mind going up on deck 
while I clean up and get dressed?" 

For a reason I didn't understand then, Youssef was unwilling to pass even 
one night in an hotel in Algiers. We drove straight from the harbor to Blida 
where we went to the house of a friend of his. We passed the evening 
charmingly, listening to singing and watching an extremely sensual Arab 
dancer. 

Next morning, we continued on our journey, the destination of which he 
refused to disclose to me. 

I told him that I didn't have a great deal of time, that I would have to fly 
to Paris within a week but that I would rejoin him as soon as possible. He 
was very off-hand about it but said that I could get an airplane from the 
interior. 

A few lays later, we abandoned the car and took to camels. There were 
probably twenty camels in the train. I found it amusing but rather tiring. 

At one point a strange thing happened. I could have sworn I saw another 
white woman one time when we were camped by an oasis. Youssef laughed and 
said that I had seen my "mirage." I dismissed the incident from my mind 
immediately. I was content to enjoy my present happiness, the strangely 
exhilarating quality of the desert, fold upon fold and sand as is swept away 
to mauve imprecision on the horizon, and the nights on warm rugs in the 
gaudy tent with my lover, now wearing Arab clothes, and more passionate and 
lustful than ever. The thought occurred to me occasionally that there might 
be another white woman in the caravan, but it made no difference to me. Even 
if she was Youssef's mistress, what did it matter? I don't remember ever 
being jealous of a man. 

It was on the third day that it happened. 

Youssef appeared to have obtained a horse from somewhere or other, a large, 
white gelding on which he pranced backward and forward the length of the 
caravan. I asked him if he could get me a horse. 

"What for?" he said. His tone was rather contemptuous. 

"Because I want one," I said, an element of indignation in my voice. 

"No. It's impossible," he said quickly. We stopped early at an oasis that 
day. I reopened the subject. 

"Why can't you get me a horse? You got one for yourself!" 

He looked at me with a cold smile. 

"You won't need a horse where you're going," he said. 

"What do you mean by that?" 

"You'll soon find out!" he said, and he turned to a group of Arabs who were 
squatting beside a tree. He shouted something in Arabic to them. Two of them 
dissociated themselves from the group and came towards us. When they were 
close, he pointed to me and walked off beyond the trees. I felt my arms 
pinioned by the two Arabs and we followed in his wake. I was frightened, but 
I couldn't help feeling that Youssef looked like a circus character with his 
shining boots and his burnoose and the whip he carried in his right hand. He 
walked a little distance off behind a dune and waited. I was dragged again 
into his presence. 

"What's all this about?" I said angrily as soon as I confronted him. 

"Shut your damn mouth!" he said and struck me across the face with the whip. 
"You'll be sorry for that," I said. He roared with laughter. , "You little 
fool!" he said. "Don't you realize that I can do just what I please with 
you?" 

"You'd better be careful!" I said. I don't know why I said it. I felt angry 
and powerless and very afraid. I think I must have been thinking vaguely of 
Mr. Pamandari although what he could do, even I failed to see. In fact, he 
could do nothing. 

"You had better forget all that, Helen," Youssef said more quietly. "This is 
the last time I shall see you. I'm going to give myself the pleasure of 
watching you being raped by these men. After that I'm going to turn you over 
to them." 

"Why?" 

"A favour to a friend," Youssef said. "Devlin's brother was a friend of 
mine. I was educated in America." 

"You damn fool! What has that got to do with me?" 

"I really don't know," he said with a smile which, when it left his lips, 
was the signal for the two men to throw themselves upon me, rip off my 
clothes and rape me there on the sand. 

In the flurry of dust and grunts and the frantic flailing of my own outraged 
limbs, I saw Youssef walk away. 

"Youssef!" 

But a brown hand was clamped over my mouth and a brutal urgency jabbed at my 
exposed and twitching loins. I was still lying there and my violators, 
calmer now, were sitting smoking and watching me, when I saw part of the 
camel train move off, Youssef on his white horse riding out of sight without 
once turning his head in my direction. 

How I hated that man! 

There is nothing more to tell. My hatred lost its edge a long time ago. I 
have become gradually acclimatized. Willingly. But that does not prevent me, 
intellectually at least, from despising the man who is responsible for my 
fate. He knew Devlin's brother! Salved his own conscience by behaving 
brutally toward me! What a despicable little man! I bear him no malice, but 
I hope he burns in hell for it! 

This writing, what a bore! How gently, how sweetly tired I am! It is growing 
dark. Soon the muezzin will cry out to bring the faithful to prayer. What a 
wonderful religion that a woman is allowed to experience so much and so 
deeply! But there is a canker of hatred for Youssef which I am unable to 
eradicate. He didn't wish me well though I was a good mistress to him. He 
thought he was punishing me. I would like to be avenged. 

Where is Nadj'a? Where is Mario? What has Mr. Pamandari done about them? The 
questions lose in definition day by day. The answers become of purely 
academic interest. I must put this manuscript away. My keeper will be here 
shortly with my beloved potion. After that I will write no more. One last 
word. I am almost sorry it is over. I feel a certain nostalgia. But that is 
irrelevant. I cannot put my pencil down. I have the urge to write more. And 
yet the story is ended. I have a vague feeling that I have left a great deal 
unsaid. But why am I so certain that it should be said at all? There is no 
reason for anything to be said. Saying is stupid. A ridiculous waste of time 
that might otherwise be lived. I think I write because it is a triumph. I 
feel the need to express that triumph. Of course it wasn't at the beginning. 
Then, I had a reason to write. I vaguely felt, I suppose, that some day this 
manuscript would lie on a desk behind which a man was sitting. What man? A 
man, I suppose, who would wish to avenge me. That little piece of dirty 
business cleaned up and I will be happy. I am happy now. But that righteous 
fool Youssef! That he should exist is an impertinence. Worse. Sacrilege. 
What am I doing still wielding this pencil? It seems to have stuck to my 
fingers. I can't get rid of it. Shores of experience slide away from me. The 
sky will be red tonight from my slit of a window. The roof-tops and the 
minaret at sunset will glow softly and noises of beasts and men and perhaps 
music will drift up to me before-after, oh yes after my beloved potion!-the 
door opens for another time and with a rising of my juices a male spine 
drives me to delirium. I must put.... 

(End of Manuscript) copy of a letter sent by major pierre javet to his 
friend, captain jaques decoeur, of the french garrison at mascara, algeria. 

Ghardaia, October 1949. 

Dear Jacques, Over two months have passed since that strange manuscript came 
into our hands. 

Extensive investigations have been made, here, in Algiers, and even in Oran, 
but little information has come to light. 

Two arabs confessed to seeing "a white woman" in the camel train of Sheikh X 
... , but when we questioned him about it-he is an influential man in these 
parts, so we had to move cautiously-he said that there was indeed "a white 
woman," a Persian dancer who is now in his harem. He even produced a 
photograph of her, taken, he says, at Blida. Meanwhile, the two witnesses, 
wily birds that they are, say that they could not positively identify the 
woman, and that the Persian dancer did actually travel with the caravan. 
There was no secret about it. On the contrary, for a woman about to go to a 
harem, it was suspiciously well-publicized. 

My own feelings, of course, are that this was "the white woman" whom Helen 
Smith (or Seferis) said she saw. 

But there it is. We are at a dead end in our investigations. The woman most 
certainly did exist. We have confirmation of that from Australia, Singapore, 
India and Monte Carlo. Whether she still exists, God knows. My own guess is 
that she is in some Arab brothel from which it would be devilishly difficult 
to extricate her. 

This might have been all. But Good God, Jacques, we had reckoned without one 
of the characters! I didn't give a second thought to Mr. Pamandari-a kindly 
and rich old Parsee, that was my impression. And because of Miss Smith's 
queer attachment to him, because of the fact that she might have been said 
to have been in his employ, I took the liberty of sending a copy of the 
manuscript to him. With some misgivings because of the references to his 
daughter, Nadya, I admit I didn't realize precisely what I was stirring up. 

"In fact, he could do nothing." That is what Helen Smith wrote, if you 
remember. That I take it now, is the only untrue assertion in the whole 
manuscript. 

I had no idea who this Mr. Pamandari was. A fortnight after I sent the 
manuscript to him, I received a polite note of thanks in which he said that 
he would look into the matter. That was all. 

But it turned out that although our sheikh was a powerful man, when compared 
to the venerable old Mr. Pamandari, he was a minnow beside an octopus. We 
soldiers sometimes don't realize what forces go on behind the scenes! 

To be brief, Mr. Pamadari brought pressure to bear on the Arab League and in 
the middle of September Sheikh X ... was assassinated in Laghout. 
Mysteriously, of course, no questions, no evidence. And now, by God, the 
whole district is in an uproar! There is a team of investigators who 
pooh-pooh our efforts and who confidently predict that they will discover 
the whereabouts of the unfortunate woman within a month. If and when they do 
so, God knows what is going to happen, but we have already received a note 
from the Governor General that all Mr. Pamandari's wishes are to be 
respected to the letter! Et voila, my boy, that is all I know! 

A good-natured member of the Foreign Office who was holidaying here smiled 
when I mentioned Mr. Pamandari. His words were: "It's no use asking what Mr. 
Pamandari has to do with this or that. He owns it." 

A bientot, Pierrot. 


THE END
