"Two of the women described in the foregoing pages stand out above the others. Perhaps I have not sufficiently shown that in the cases of W. H. and S. H. I felt a considerable degree of passion. W. H. was the first woman with whom I had had intercourse; this invested her in my heart, with a peculiar sentiment. In neither case can I be accused of fickleness. Indeed, I may say that up to this time I had had no opportunity of being fickle. I never saw enough, or had enough, of a woman to get a surfeit of her.
"The case I now come to presents the features of the cases of W. H. and S. H. in a stronger form. I was then 20; I have since then married; I am a father; my experiences have been many and varied; but still I must confess that no other woman has ever stirred my emotions more than—I doubt if as much as—D. C. Up to date, if there has been any grand passion in my life, it is my love for her. D. C., when I got to know her—by talking to her in the street—was a girl of about 20. She was short and plump; dark hair; dark, mischievous eyes; a fair complexion; small features; quiet manners, and a sensual ensemble. I do not know what her father was. He was dead, her mother kept a university lodging house. She spoke and behaved like a lady. She dressed quietly; was absolutely unmercenary; her intelligence—i.e., her intellectual calibre—was not great. Her master-passion was one thing. The first evening I walked out with her she put her hand down on my penis, before I had even kissed her, and proposed intercourse. I was surprised, almost embarrassed; she herself led me to a wall, and standing up made me do it.
"Next day we went away for the day together. I may say she was always ready and never satisfied. She was sensual rather than sentimental. She was ready to shower her favors anywhere and to anyone. My feelings toward her soon became affectionate and sentimental, and then passionate. I thought of nothing else all day long; wrote her long letters daily; simply lived to see her.
"I found she was engaged to be married. Her fiancé, a schoolmaster, himself used to have intercourse with her, but he had taken a religious turn and thought it was wicked to do it until they married. I had intercourse with her on every possible occasion: in private rooms at hotels, in railway carriages, in a field, against a wall, and—when the holidays came—she stayed a night with me in London. She had apparently no fear of getting in the family way, and never used any precaution. Sensual as she was, she did not show her feelings by outward demonstration.
"On one occasion she proposed fellatio. She said she had done it to her fiancé and liked it. This is the only case I have known of a woman wishing to do it for the love of it.
"The emotional tension on my nerves—the continual jealousy I was in, the knowledge that before long she would marry and we must part—eventually caused me to get ill. She never told me she loved me more than any other man; yet, owing to my importunity, she saw much more of me than anyone else. It came to the ears of her fiancé that she was in my company a great deal; there was a meeting of the three of us—convened at his wish—at which she had formally, before him, to say 'good-bye' to me. Yet we still continued to meet and to have intercourse.
"Then the date of her marriage drew near. She wrote me saying that she could not see me any more. I forced myself, however, on her, and our relations still continued. Her elder sister interviewed me and said she would inform the authorities unless I gave her up; a brother, too, came to see me and made a row.
"I had what I seriously intended to be a last meeting with her. But after that she came up to London to see me, we went to a hotel together. We arranged to see one another again, but she did not write. I had now left the university. I heard she was married.
"It was now four years since I had first had intercourse with a woman. During this time I was almost continually under the influence, either of a definite love affair or of a general lasciviousness and desire for intercourse with women. My character and life were naturally affected by this. My studies were interfered with; I had become extravagant and had run into debt. It is worthy of note that I had never up to this time considered the desirability of marriage. This was perhaps chiefly because I had no means to marry. But even in the midst of my affairs I always retained sufficient sense to criticise the moral and intellectual calibre of the women I loved, and I held strong views on the advisability of mental and moral sympathies and congenital tastes existing between people who married. In my amours I had hitherto found no intellectual equality or sympathies. My passion for D. C. was prompted by (1) the bond that sexual intercourse with a woman has nearly always produced in my feelings, (2) her physical beauty, (3) that she was sensual, (4) that she was a lady, (5) that she was young, (6) that she was not mercenary. It was kept alive by the obstacles in the way of my seeing her enough and by her engagement to another.
"The D. C. affair left me worn out emotionally. I reviewed my life of the last four years. It seemed to show much more heartache, anxiety, and suffering than pleasure. I concluded that this unsatisfactory result was inseparable from the pursuit of illegitimate amours. I saw that my work had been interfered with, and that I was in debt, owing to the same cause. Yet I felt that I could never do without a woman. In this quandary I found myself thinking that marriage was the only salvation for me. Then I should always have a woman by me. I was sufficiently sensible to know that unless there were congenial tastes and sympathies, a marriage could not turn out happily, especially as my chief interests in life (after woman) were literature, history, and philosophy. But I imagined that if I could find a girl who would satisfy the condition of being an intellectual companion to me, all my troubles would be over; my sexual desire would be satisfied, and I could devote myself to work.