And it was true. I did feel a stir of jealousy. Do I look like that when Smahil has finished with me? How intricate and yet passionate their love must have been, here in my familiar lonely room, in the hour I was gone. Of course she is a practised mistress in the art, which to me is only a new willy-nilly experience, something which happens to me.

“Slut!”

She hissed.

Suddenly I wanted to laugh. I knew that I am this particular courtesan’s superior in wit, in whatever else I might be her inferior. “You look so much more yourself, madam, as you are.” And, just as I had smiled at her earlier, I gave my very nicest, most genuine, candid chuckle.

She leaped up, her claws shimmering. For a moment I didn’t even mind inciting her to draw blood. Gods know, I am used enough to fighting women, it has been consistently forced upon me. But, as she plunged on to me, I remembered again that she is my superior in size and strength and certainly in experience. I remembered again her hell-cat reputation. Oh, Cousin, damn Smahil and his looker’s-on desire to see me at last forced into displaying some strong emotion-action for him. Damn his cruel, self-ridden, looker’s-on, masturbating hate for me—the curse, swift as it had to be, was like a gush of venom in my brain.

I was under her and she unremittingly heavy as any lover, without hesitation, the first thing, her nails straight for my eyes, I shall be torn and blinded and the pain—

I spat in her face and twisted, burying my face in the rug. This strained my neck almost to breaking point. The nails dug themselves into my scalp and pain stung through my eyes and ears. She was wrenching at my hair. My hand groped convulsively for something to hang on to, my only chance was to keep my face away from her, and my fingers felt something long and smooth. For a moment they didn’t think to inquire what it was; then—a thong! The ribbon thong of my sandal! I clutched on it, drew the sandal in towards me, got a frenzied grip on it, turned and bashed it into her eye as the nail store down my cheek. “Ohyou-filthy-littlesoandso,” she screamed all in one gasp. It was so piercing that I was assailed by acute nausea. I tensed all my muscles ready for the next onslaught but she had got up and was clutching her eye. “Oh, oh, you’ve driven it right through my head,” she moaned and staggered, calling me a string of the filthiest names I’ve ever heard, though filthy was the adjective she put for me in front of every one of them.