Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/163

Rh be decorated with it. For you appear to be even more than man. A wonderful visitant from some other world. A super-man!

"I am afraid, Tom, you may be only a dream. I am afraid you may be only an apparition with me a brief hour, then to return, like Lohengrin, to the heavenly realm where the hero is immeasurably beyond anything we have on earth.

"So from to-night on, your legal first name is Tom.' And after I have tried you out, you will take my own legal surname. But my pet name is 'Prince Wonderful!' Can you feel, Prince Wonderful, that you charm me as a serpent a bird that it creeps upon in order to swallow? I know I am doing something crazy in letting you swallow me; in turning my back on all my own pleasures and prospects in order that you may get more out of life. For I would rather be the instrument through which a demigod like yourself enjoys some good before my eyes than myself to enjoy it. It is crazy of me; but my instincts lead that way, and I have the will to act that way. Muscular prodigy I Sky-scraper dare-devil! Your prodigious strength and muscles cement me to you as with hoops of steel!"

We soon took a stroll of half-a-mile to the East River, to a neighborhood of gas-houses, closed factories, and storeyards. No one ventured here after dark except homeless gutter-snipes in summer to sleep. I myself would not have ventured at night anywhere near these dingy and desolate blocks except under the protection of a Strong Hans.

On female-impersonation sprees in the Rialto and Stuyvesant Square, I was always richly clad and wore jewelry. While during my year's