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MY SECRET LIFE in love and ran away,” said mother. Said I, “Perhaps she had gone off with a bobby,” it was a current joke then, policemen not having been long invented. My mother said in her severe way, “She is a virtuous woman, a youth like you should not utter ignorant jokes about women, especially about the humbler classes, to whom good reputation is everything.” I began to see plainer than ever, that I could humbug mother after that.

Many of our conversations are told here in her very words, others as nearly as I can recollect them. I have often wondered at the way this woman behaved to me, talked to me, and all about her. The circumstances as they occurred, even at the time seemed peculiar; I felt as if I was wicked in getting into her, almost as if I was going to poke my mother; but I cannot attempt to analyze motives or sensations, I simply narrate facts. Certain it is, that I never have had a woman who in behaviour resembled Mary, in manner, conversation, and general behaviour,—I always felt as if she were a superior person to me, as if she were obliging me and not herself, and was putting me under an obligation, by letting me fuck her.

Again lonely, I not only wanted cunt, but also the society of a woman, it was so sweet to see and talk, to some one I fucked; to do so secretly, was an additional charm, and I used to feel quite sad. I was then about in my eighteenth year. —155—