Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/148

122 opener. Whenever my gaze fell on the poor innocent, the words of the Bible went through my head: 'He is led as a lamb to the slaughter! And as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth!' I am sorry my hero-boy stoops to take advantage of an unsophisticated Reub! '

While we ate our midnight lunch, Buddie confided his evening's adventure. I was always inquisitive about the ways and habits of the tremendously virile—how they looked upon the mystery we call "life"—and habitually put to my numerous soulmates a long list of questions in case they did not spontaneously overflow. But it is an earmark of crooks to be garrulous with their soulmates. The former are proud of their sharpwittedness and gloat in unburdening their minds to some one they think they can trust. Their characteristic bragging to confidants is one of the chief means by which many of them finally fall within the toils of the law.

Secondly, Buddie was my soulmate. At that date, we felt ourselves husband and wife. For I am myself fundamentally a woman, though possessing the male primary determinants. The relationship of knit souls—amalgamation of two separate personalities of opposite sex into ONE human being—I have discovered tends to mutual confidences. I had already several times been in Buddie's presence when he had an intended victim (always a Reub) in tow, and saw through everything even if he had not told me. If it be asked how I, pretending to be of high morals, could associate with sharpers, I answer:. In my subsequent Bowery period, described in my