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each stroke accompanied by a contortion that gripped him. At last they eased, and he shuddered, groaning, his eyes closed tight.
    With no warning he collapsed on top of me, and I realized it was over.
    For a few minutes, as he fought for breath, I wondered if the pleasuring would begin now. I wondered if it had only been such an empty, fumbling anguish the first time. But I realized the truth of the thing when he raised himself on his palms on either side, looking down at me with a broad, satisfied smile, his brown eyes sparkling.
    "God, that was incredible. You're wonderful, Létice."
    Wonderful. I was wonderful. I'd lain down beneath him on the ground and spread my legs apart. A cow could have done the same. And he called me wonderful, his eyes bright, as if we'd traveled up to paradise together.
    With that, I wriggled my way out from beneath him, bent only on escape, snatching up my madras as I ran for the clean, clear water. I heard his voice behind me shouting, "Wait! Aren't we going to do it again?"
    Thoughtlessly, and I suppose cruelly, I called back over my shoulder, "Not if I can help it!" before I plunged into the water, diving beneath, going as deep as possible as quickly as I could.  Shame was beginning to settle over me, of a sort I'd never felt before, my first taste of a very adult regret. Swirling underwater, spinning my body like a crocodile, I rubbed with my wrap between my legs, trying to wash away any remnant of him in the depths of the crystalline water.
    Time has softened the memory, and yet, one of the most vivid images in my mind came that night, after I'd hidden myself in my room. I washed out my wrap, as I always did, and saw a thin strand of blood on it. It took me an addled moment to realize it was my blood, my virgin blood. A thing I could now never offer a husband. I'd given it away in a childish rage to a pretty and pathetic boy. Rather than hanging it on the line, I hid the madras until it was half-dried, and the next night I burned it. I had two days left at Presque Isle. With any luck, I would never set eyes on Eugène Ducasse again.
    I shall leave off telling of the pain of my farewells, the tears I tried and failed to hide that racked me throughout that last day. My father remained stoic, a thing that sharpened my grief further, though he embraced me at the docks and wished me godspeed, promising me a great ball on my homecoming. A thing that was never to be.
    As the ship pulled from its berth, sails unfurling to take the swelling tide, carrying me from the two things I loved best, my father and my home, I resolved to dry my tears, for I could do no other in any case. It was that ruthless pragmatism taking hold. I lost a dear childhood friend at a tender age, to smallpox, for the miraculous science of inoculation, being purposely infected with a strain of the dread disease, had not yet reached our island. Thinking of her in that moment, I resolved to forgive myself Eugène Ducasse, and to turn from no experience out of fear of remorse, for surely the most agonizing regret is of what we haven't done, the cup turned from our lips for fear of the delights within it, leaving only parched regret. I tried to look forward, not back, to the potential for adventure that lay ahead, despite convent walls being so high.
    Instinctively, I knew there was much more to the joining of a man and woman than the brief, pathetic tryst that had brought me no pleasure, brought nothing but pain and disgust. I knew I'd fallen victim to my own impatience and spite, choosing badly, nay disastrously, the first young man to present himself with an erect prick in his hand.
    But I had no understanding that I was like a lamp in a darkened corner, filled to the brim at its core, the wick dark and dry, waiting only for the single strike of the flint to set it aflame, for this was its incendiary nature. I would have to pass through the fire, enduring an experience of horror and outrage, one from which many women might never