the double meaning, «but I cannot rise so well! What fools we women are, we can't master even the act of love; we are so awkward!» «Your awkwardness, however, excites me,» I said. «Does it?» she cried. «Then I'll do my best,» and for some time she rose and sank rhythmically; but, as her excitement grew, she just let herself lie on me and wiggled her bottom till we both came. She was flushed and hot and I couldn't help asking her a question. «Does your excitement grow to a spasm of pleasure,» I asked, «or do you go on getting more and more excited continually?» «I get more and more excited,» she said, «till the other day with you, for the first time in my life, the pleasure became unbearably intense and I was hysterical, you wonder-lover!» Since then I have read lascivious books in half a dozen languages and they all represent women coming to an orgasm in the act, as men do, followed by a period of content; which only shows that the books are all written by men, and ignorant, insensitive men at that. The truth is: hardly one married woman in a thousand is ever brought to her highest pitch of feeling; usually, just when she begins to feel, her husband goes to sleep. If the majority of husbands satisfied their wives occasionally, the woman's revolt would soon move to another purpose: women want above all a lover who lives to excite them to the top of their bent. As a rule, men through economic conditions marry so late that they have already half-exhausted their virile power before they marry. And when they marry young, they are so ignorant and self-centered that they imagine their wives must be satisfied when they are. Mrs. Mayhew told me that her husband had never excited her, really. She denied that she had ever had any real acute pleasure from his embraces. «Shall I make you hysterical again?» I asked, out of boyish vanity. «I can, you know!» «You mustn't tire yourself!» she warned. «My husband taught me long ago that when a woman tires a man, he gets a distaste for her, and I want your love, your desire, dear, a thousand times more even than the delight you give me-»
«Don't be afraid,» I broke in. «You are sweet; you couldn't tire me; turn sideways and put your left leg up, and I'll just let my sex caress your clitoris back and forth gently; every now and then I'll let it go right in until our hairs meet.» I kept on this game perhaps half an hour until she first sighed and sighed and then made awkward movements with her pussy which I sought to divine and meet as she wished, when suddenly she cried: «Oh! Oh! Hurt me, please! hurt me, or I'll bite you! Oh God, oh, oh,» panting, breathless till again the tears poured down! «You darling,» she sobbed. «How you can love! Could you go on forever?» For answer, I put her hand on my sex. «Just as naughty as ever,» she exclaimed, «and I am choking, breathless, exhausted! Oh, I'm sorry,» she went on, «but we should get up, for I don't want my help to know or guess: niggers talk-» I got up and went to the windows; one gave on the porch, but the other directly on the garden. «What are you looking at?» she asked, coming to me. «I was just looking for the best way to get out if ever we were surprised,» I said. «If we leave this window open I can always drop into the garden and get away quickly.» «You would hurt yourself,» she cried. «Not a bit of it,» I answered. «I could drop half as far again without injury; the only thing is, I must have boots on and trousers, or those thorns of yours would gip!» «You boy,» she exclaimed laughing. «I think after your strength and passion, it is your boyishness I love best»-and she kissed me again and again. «I must work,» I warned her; «Smith has given me a lot to do.» «Oh, my dear,» she said, her eyes filling with tears,
«that means you won't come tomorrow or,» she added hastily, «even the day after?» «I can't possibly,» I declared. «I have a good week's work in front of me; but you know I'll come the first afternoon I can make myself free and I'll let you know the day before, sweet!»
She looked at me with tearful eyes and quivering lips. «Love is its own torment!» she sighed, while I dressed and got away quickly.
The truth was I was already satiated. Her passion held nothing new in it: she had taught me all she could and had nothing more in her, I thought; while Kate was prettier and much younger and a virgin.
Why shouldn't I confess it? It was Kate's virginity that attracted me irresistibly: I pictured her legs to myself, her hips and thighs…
The next few days passed in reading the books Smith had lent me, especially Das Kapital, the second book of which, with its frank exposure of the English factory system, was simply enthralling. I read some of Tacitus, too, and Xenophon with a crib, and learned a page of Greek every day by heart, and whenever I felt tired of work I laid siege to Kate. That is, I continued my plan of campaign. One day I called her brother into my room and told him true stories of buffalo hunting and of fighting with Indians; another day I talked theology with the father or drew the dear mother out to tell of her girlish days in Cornwall. «I never thought I'd come to work like this in my old age, but then children take all and give little; I was no better as a girl, I remember,»-and I got a scene of her brief courtship!
I had won the whole household long before I said a word to Kate beyond the merest courtesies. A week or so passed like this till one day I held them all after dinner while I told the story of our raid into Mexico. I took care, of course, that Kate was out of the room.
Towards the end of my tale, Kate came in: at once I hastened to end abruptly, and after excusing myself, went into the garden. Half an hour later I saw she was in my room tidying up; I took thought and then went up the outside steps. As soon as I saw her I pretended surprise. «I beg your pardon,» I said. «I'll just get a book and go at once; please don't let me disturb you!» and I pretended to look for the book. She turned sharply and looked at me fixedly. «Why do you treat me like this!» she burst out, shaking with indignation.
«Like what?» I repeated, pretending surprise. «You know quite well,» she went on angrily, hastily. «At first I thought it was chance, unintentional; now I know you mean it. Whenever you are talking or telling a story, as soon as I come into the room you stop and hurry away as if you hated me. Why? Why?» she cried with quivering lips. «What have I done to make you dislike me so?» and the tears gathered in her lovely eyes. I felt the moment had come: I put my hands on her shoulders and looked with my whole soul into her eyes.
«Did you never guess, Kate, that it might be love, not hate?» I asked.
«No, no!» she cried, the tears falling. «Love does not act like that!» «Fear to miss love does, I can assure you,» I cried. «I thought at first that you disliked me and already I had begun to care for you» (my arms went round her waist and I drew her to me), «to love you and want you. Kiss me, dear,» and at once she gave me her lips, while my hand got busy on her breasts and then went down of itself to her sex. Suddenly she looked at me gaily, brightly, while heaving a big sigh of relief. «I'm glad, glad!» she said. «If you only knew how hurt I was and how I tortured myself; one moment I was angry, then I was sad. Yesterday I made up my mind to speak, but today I said to myself, I'll just be obstinate and cold as he is and now-» and of her own accord she put her arms round my neck and kissed me-«you are a dear, dear! Anyway, I love you!» «You mustn't give me those bird- pecks!» I exclaimed. «Those are not kisses: I want your lips to open and cling to mine,» and I kissed her while my tongue darted into her mouth and I stroked her sex gently. She flushed, but at first didn't understand; then suddenly she blushed rosy red as her lips grew hot and she fairly ran from the room. I exulted: I knew I had won: I must be very quiet and reserved and the bird would come to the lure; I felt exultingly certain! Meanwhile I spent nearly every morning with Smith: golden hours! Always, always before we parted, he showed me some new beauty or revealed some new truth: he seemed to me the most wonderful creature in this strange, sunlit world. I used to hang entranced on his eloquent lips! (Strange! I was sixty-five before I found such a hero-worshiper as I was to Smith, who was only four or five and twenty!) He made me know all the Greek dramatists: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and put them for me in a truer light than English or German scholars have set them yet. He knew that Sophocles was the greatest, and from his lips I learned every chorus in the Oedipus Rex and Colonnus before I had completely mastered the Greek grammar; indeed, it was the supreme beauty of the literature that forced me to learn the language. In teaching me the choruses, he was careful to point out that it was possible to keep the measure and yet mark the accent too: in fact, he made classic Greek a living language to me, as living as English. And he would not let me neglect Latin: in the first year with him I knew poems of Catullus by heart, almost as well as I knew Swinburne. Thanks to Professor Smith, I had no difficulty in entering the junior class at the university; in fact, after my first three or four months' work was easily the first in the class, which included Ned Stephens, the brother of Smith's inamorata.
I soon discovered that Smith was heels over head in love with Kate Stephens, shot through the heart, as Mercutio would say, with a fair girl's blue eye! And small wonder, for Kate was lovely; a little above middle height with slight, rounded figure and most attractive face: the oval, a thought long, rather than round, with dainty, perfect features, lit up by a pair of superlative grey-blue eyes, eyes by turns delightful and reflective and appealing, that mirrored a really extraordinary intelligence. She was in the senior class and afterwards for years held the position of Professor of Greek in the university. I shall have something to say of her in a later volume of this history, for I met her again in New York nearly fifty years later. But in 1872 or '73, her brother Ned, a handsome lad of eighteen who was in my class, interested me more. The only other member of the senior class of this time was a fine fellow, Ned Bancroft, who later came to France with me to study. At this time, curiously
