Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/184

158 me for saying it, Phyllis. On the other hand, the muscles of an athlete compel the attention."

Later it chanced that Roland Reeves and myself entered into a soft-spoken dialogue: "Ralph, do you know any woman-man whom we ought to get into the Cercle?"

"Four! But they do not realize anybody is wise outside the young athlete each has selected as chum. No one but another woman-man, or a full-fledged man who had read Krafft-Ebing, would ever suspect them. Their public conduct is always the height of propriety. One of them even makes it a practice to boast of excesses cum femina—to ward off suspicion, for he has always shunned females as one would the plague. But on the basis of self-knowledge, we women-men easily recognize our own kind. I need only hear the voice and glimpse the features and figure.

"But none of the four ever visits the Underworld. They do not feel the need. Their being so fortunate as to have secured soul-mates among their every-day circle has proved their safety-valve. You, Roland, and I have simply been denied by Providence a heroconfidant from among our every-day circle. Moreover, we have been unwilling to risk betrayal to that circle. We are not hunting for high-figured blackmail and possibly years in prison.

"One is a university student. The college body refers to his ultra-virile room-mate and himself as "X and wife." But no user of the phrase ever dreams of its real significance, not knowing of the existence of intermediates. Of course they have heard of homo-