himself as the servants arrived through the kitchen at six o'clock.
Next day, Fanny stayed in bed, scolded tenderly for her love of theatres and suppers by her affectionate mother, although she could well understand the allurement of a coup of iced consomme and a truffle or two after the enjoyment of a new play.
The guilty couple now sailed on a calm and laughing lake of unmitigated wanton voluptuousness. Sandcross and his daughter lived through a perpetual honeymoon, and the electrician's wife was charmed to see such a perfect union, suspecting of course nothing whatever. A mother is always the last to grasp the guilt of her children. Sandcross's wife compared the life of their daughter with that of other girls in Paris; fretful, bickering, coquettish maidens, suffering from green sickness, and perpetually worrying their poor parents to get them a husband so that the wayward up-to-date damsels shall be at liberty to love – other men of their own choice.
Fanny grew exceptionally obedient and meek. Her chorus of 'Yes, ma!' and 'Yes, pa!' would have made the recording angel retire from business, had not the devil been there to whisper in his ear the secret of incestuous lechery that kept Fanny so outwardly calm. Indeed, when matrimony was mentioned it was she who consoled her mamma, impatient to see her daughter smothered in orange-blossoms and white faille.
'What are the men about?' she would sigh, and worry her husband to leave France, and settle in England, Saxon suitors not being so mercenary as the sons of Gaul.
In the meanwhile, Fanny and her father slipped into each other's rooms at night whenever it suited them, and that was very often.
From the point of view of simple salacity, it is perfectly certain that nothing can equal the enjoyment to be found with a young girl, really loving the man who has deflowered her. Her sensual being gradually develops in the arms of a male who is, for the time being, all in all to her-the one man in whom every thought and desire is centred. The surprises of slowly approaching womanhood, and the first thrills of ravishing, immodest pleasure and prurience have all arisen in her under his influence. She becomes his devoted slave, thankful for a kiss, and brimming over with gratitude for the deeper insidious final caress when he chooses to bestow it upon her.
There was another and more cynical standpoint which we must not forget, which will rejoice the heart of all those who find the power of their passions weirdly increased by inflicting punishment upon the object of their affections. To be able to hurt the loved one, mingling pleasure and pain at one's sweet will, certain that the dolent martyr will eagerly kiss the hand that brandishes the birch, is not that a most enchanting dream of overpowering delight?
Fanny's first sensual spasm was due to spanking, and the desire to be flogged would thus last all her life, inseparable from other yearnings. A young woman, whipped by her first lover, nearly always falls under the spell of the enchanted twigs. It seems as if the rod, red-hot, burnt into the brain, indelibly searing the imagination of the so-called victim. Such is the invisible brand of the birch.
Papa taught her everything that a woman could possibly require to know, especially those tit-bits of refined scientific stupration which females are generally better without. What a difference to the half-veiled semi- falsehoods of her silly governesses! Here was practice and theory.
What delighted Fanny most was Sandcross's staff of life itself; the tremendous instrument from which had sprung the mysterious germ of her existence. Alone with her father, she must need free the blind bird from its cage, and at rest, or proudly standing, it was unceasingly the object of her wondering admiration. She would play with it for hours, kissing it, talking to it, purring over it, examining it as if she saw it for the first time whenever her invidious hand dived deeply down in the folds of her father's underwear. When her eager, tickling touches caused her pa's excitement to bring him close to the goal of the orgasm, she fell back on his big hairy purse, playfully handling and dandling the slumbering olives which she deliriously exclaimed were her twin idols. She had sprung from their white foam like another Venus rising from a sea of sperm, and now they gave her the sole pleasure she hungered for in this world. How could she help worshipping them?
There was not the slightest shadow of repentance or remorse to darken the dazzling path leading through their waking dream of highly refined voluptuousness, and if it were possible for either of them to have given utterance to any inward prayer whatsoever, they would have lifted up their hearts in some song of touching, joyful thanksgiving to the unknown power that had created the daughter for the father, and the father for the daughter.
Fanny, by dint of perpetually playing a part, grew in time to be a most perfect actress and a ready, able, tricky liar. She gloried in her hypocrisy, and now and then amused herself by skating on the thinnest of ice, tempting Providence, and abandoning her mouth and body to the most shameless caresses, before her mother's back was scarcely turned.
Sandcross developed a new malady which he had invented himself-a kind of intermittent insomnia. He had irregular attacks of sleeplessness, enabling him to wander about the house at nights, and thus furnishing excuses for all noises and sounds of footsteps which might be heard in the small hours. His only cure was a glass of soda- water liberally dashed with spirits about two in the morning, with a cigar-and his wily, lustful daughter of the innocent violet eyes, to keep him company. She would then read to him chapters from ultra-naughty novels in French, English, and German, printed on the sly, and soon was a walking encyclopaedia of love, passion, and bawdiness. She rolled with radiant ecstasy in the slough of her shame, proud of being her own father's mistress, and always eager to learn fresh secrets of licentiousness.
In spite of all his scolding and alarms she would never permit him those exercises known to Malthusian couples as 'withdrawing, nor practise any fraudulent tricks to hinder conception. Copulation, without the final shower of soft seed, she opined was like kissing a woman or a priest, something very nice, but detestably incomplete. If she fell in the family way, she declared she would retire to Switzerland, or Belgium, and under a false name bring her dear baby into the world. She unblushingly declared to her father that she secretly longed to find herself enceinte, and would be pleased beyond measure to bear a boy, for preference, the picture she hoped of the dual father and grandfather.
Luckily her womb remained refractory, although she did all she could to bring about this consummation which her father devoutly wished would never take place.
Another of this extraordinary couple's delights was to take little trips alone together to most of the European capitals. Sandcross's business allowed him to travel as much as he liked; he had but to-take the place of his representatives. By this means, he increased his gains and enjoyed his daughter more freely.
The rich Englishman and the young and lovely woman who was generally taken for his wife or mistress, had many strange little adventures together, seeing peculiar sights, as they always sought for some glorious indecency in all the capitals they visited. In Sweden and Norway, they had women to attend to them in their bath; in Russia, men assisted during their ablutions; and at Ostend, one day, on repairing to a bath-house, they were shown by the sedate proprietor into a double bathroom.
It must not be thought that Sandcross ever allowed any stranger to touch his daughter. He did not debauch her to that extent, nor did her insatiable curiosity for all the sights in the peep-show of sexual horrors induce her to forget her allegiance to her papa. She was an onlooker. She liked to see, but not to touch or be touched. We need not say more. The following instances will suffice to show our meaning.
Her father had been told that in Paris were miserable prostitutes of the lowest class, too old and ugly, or if young, too shabby, to show themselves in the light of day, and who eked out a precarious living by masturbating passers-by in the darkest recesses of the public parks and gardens. Fanny wanted to see these off-scourings of femininity, and her papa allowed her to view most smutty scenes.
There was a young creature dressed in bicycle costume, who with an old rusty machine, used to haunt the benches of the Bois de Boulogne. When in a lonely bypath, she espied a man on foot or on horseback, she would rise from her seat and open her bloomers in front showing the gaping, worn mystery of her shop-soiled sex. If this simple enticement succeeded, the sylvan siren drew her prey into the bushes and there offered him the contents of her breeches or the succour of her hands and mouth for a franc or two. She satisfied horsemen by standing on a bench or broad post, using her lips and mouth to sate their spending appetite, without it being necessary for them to dismount. Fanny saw her at work, and opened her baby eyes with her look of simplicity and candour, while the slow moisture of lickerish lewd desire on her glorious lips betrayed the secret concealed by her skirts, as she glanced at her father.
Their blood heated to boiling point, they would return to their taxi, stationed some little distance off, and Fanny would study the old legend of Saint George and the dragon, on pa's lap, greedily engulfing to the pommel the beloved sword that taught her mother the science of cut and thrust years ago, and which now urged on the daughter to her molten crisis of incest, assisted by the shaking of the hired vehicle.
