For the first time in my hie I notice here that the writer's art is not only inferior to reality in keenness of sensation and emotion, but also more same, monotonous even, because of showing the tiny, yet ineffable differences of the same feeling which difference of personality brings with it. I seem to be repeating to myself in describing Kate's love after Mrs. Mayhew's, making the girl's feeling a fainter replica of the woman's. In reality the two were completely different. Mrs.
Mayhew's feelings, long repressed, flamed with the heat of an afternoon in July or August, while in Kate's one felt the freshness and cool of a summer morning, shot through with the suggestion of heat to come. And this comparison, even, is inept, because it leaves out the account the effect of Kate's beauty, the great hazel eyes, the rosied skin, the superb figure. Besides, there was a glamor of the spirit about Kate: Lorna Mayhew would never give me a new note that didn't spring from passion; in Kate I felt a spiritual personality and the thrill of undeveloped possibilities. And still, using my utmost skill, I haven't shown my reader the enormous superiority of the girl and her more unselfish love. But I haven't finished yet. Smith had given me The Mill on the Floss to read; I had never tried George Eliot before and I found that this book almost deserved Smith's praise. I had read till about one o'clock when my heart heard her; or was it some thrill of expectance? The next moment my door opened and she came in with the mane of hair about her shoulders and a long dressing gown reaching to her stocking feet. I got up like a flash, but she had already closed the door and bolted it. I drew her to the bed and stopped her from throwing off the dressing-gown. «Let me take off your stockings first,» I whispered. «I want you all imprinted on me!» The next moment she stood there naked, the flickering flame of the candle throwing quaint arabesques of light on her ivory body. I gazed and gazed: from the navel down she was perfect; I turned her round and the back, too, the bottom, even, was faultless, though large: but alas! the breasts were far too big for beauty, too soft to excite! I must think only of the bold curve of her hips, I reflected, the splendor of the firm thighs, the flesh of which had the hard outline of marble, and her-sex. I put her on the bed and opened her thighs: her pussy was ideally perfect. At once I wanted to get into her; but she pleaded: «Please, dear, come into bed, I'm cold and want you.» So in I got and began kissing her. Soon she grew warm and I pulled off my night-shirt and my middle finger was caressing her sex that opened quickly. «E-E,» she said, drawing in her breath quickly, «It still hurts.» I put my sex gently against hers, moving it up and down slowly till she drew up her knees to let me in; but, as soon as the head entered, her face puckered a little with pain and, as I had had a long afternoon, I was the more inclined to forbear, and accordingly I drew away and took place beside her. «I cannot bear to hurt you,» I said. «Love's pleasure must be natural.» «You're sweet!» she whispered. «I'm glad you stopped, for it shows you really care for me and not just for the pleasure,» and she kissed me lovingly. «Kate, reward me,» I said, «by telling me just what you felt when I first had you,» and I put her hand on my hot stiff sex to encourage her. «It's impossible,» she said, flushing a little.
«There was such a throng of new feelings; why, this evening, waiting in bed for the time to pass and thinking of you, I felt a strange prickling sensation in the inside of my thighs that I never felt before and now»-and she hid her glowing face against my neck, «I feel it again! «Love is funny, isn't it?» she whispered the next moment. «Now the pricking sensation is gone and the front part of my sex burns and itches. Oh! I must touch it!» «Let me,» I cried, and, in a moment, I was on her, working my organ up and down on her clitoris, the porch, so to speak, of Love's temple. A little later she herself sucked the head into her hot, dry pussy and then closed her legs as if in pain to stop me going further; but I began to rub my sex up and down on her tickler, letting it slide right in every now and then, till she panted and her love-juice came and my weapon sheathed itself in her naturally. I soon began the very slow and gentle in-and-out movements which increased her excitement steadily while giving her more and more pleasure, till I came and immediately she lifted my chest up from her breasts with both hands and showed me her glowing face. «Stop, boy,» she gasped, «please, my heart's fluttering so! I came too, you know, just with you,» and indeed I felt her trembling all over convulsively. I drew out and for safety's sake got her to use the syringe, having already explained its efficacy to her: she was adorably awkward and, when she had finished, I took her to bed again and held her to me, kissing her. «So you really love me, Kate!» «Really,» she said, «you don't know how much! I'll try never to suspect anything or to be jealous again.» She went on, «It's a hateful thing, isn't it? But I want to see your classroom: would you take me up once to the university?» «Why, of course,» I cried. «I should be only too glad; «I'll take you tomorrow afternoon. Or better still,» I added, «come up the hill at four o'clock and I'll meet you at the entrance.» And so it was settled and Kate went back to her room as noiselessly as she had come. The next afternoon I found her waiting in the university hall ten minutes before the hour, for our lectures beginning at the hour always stopped after forty-five minutes to give us time to be punctual at any other classroom. After showing her everything of interest, we walked home together laughing and talking, when, a hundred yards from Mrs. Mayhew's, we met that lady, face to face. I don't know how I looked, for being a little shortsighted, I hadn't recognized her till she was within ten yards of me; but her glance pierced me. She bowed with a look that took us both in. I lifted my hat and we passed on. «Who's that?» exclaimed Kate, «What a strange look she gave us!» «She's the wife of a gambler,» I replied as indifferently as I could. «He gives me work now and then,» I went on, strangely forecasting the future. Kate looked at me, probing, then, «I don't mind. I'm glad she's quite old!» «As old as both of us put together!» I retorted traitorously, and we went in. These love-passages with Mrs. Mayhew and Kate, plus my lessons and my talks with Smith, fairly represent my life's happenings for this whole year from seventeen to eighteen, with this solitary qualification, that my afternoons with Lorna became less and less agreeable to me. But now I must relate happenings that again affected my life. I hadn't been four months with the Gregorys when Kate told me that my brother Willie had ceased to pay my board for me more than a fortnight. She added sweetly, «It doesn't matter, dear, but I thought you ought to know and I'd hate anyone to hurt you, so I took it on myself to tell you.» I kissed her, said it was sweet of her and went to find Willie. He made excuses, voluble but not convincing, and ended up by giving me a check while begging me to tell Mrs. Gregory that he, too, would come and board with her. The incident set me thinking. I made Kate promise to tell me if he ever failed again to pay what was due, and I used the happening to excuse myself to Lorna.
I went to see her and told her that I must think at once of earning my living. I had still some five hundred dollars left, but I wanted to be before-hand with need; besides, it gave me a good excuse for not visiting her even weekly. «I must work!» I kept repeating, though I was ashamed of the lie. «Don't whip me, dear!» she pleaded. «My impotence to help you is painful enough; give me time to think. I know Mayhew is quite well off: give me a day or two, but come to me when you can. You see, I've no pride where you are concerned: I just beg like a dog for kind treatment for my love's sake. I wouldn't have believed that I could be so transformed. I was always so proud: my husband calls me 'proud and cold'-me cold! It's true I shiver when I hear your voice, but it's the shivering of fever. When you came in just now unexpectedly and kissed me waves of heat swept over me: my womb moved inside me. I never felt that till I had loved you and now, of course, my sex burns-I wish I were cold: a cold woman could rule the world. «But no! I wouldn't change. Just as I never wished to be a man, never. Though other girls used to say they would like to change their sex, I, never! And since I've been married, less than ever. What's a man? His love is over before ours begins.»
«Really?» I broke in grinning. «Not you, my beloved!» she cried. «Oh, not you; but then you are more than a man! Come, don't let us waste time in talk. Now I have you, take me to our Heaven. I'm ready, 'ripe-ready' is your word: I go to our bed as to an altar. If I'm only to have you even less than once a week, don't come again for ten days: I shall be well again then and you can surely come to me a few days running. I want to reach the heights and hug the illusion, cramming one hot week with bliss and then death for a fortnight. What rags we women are! Come, dear, I will be your sheath and you shall be the sword and drive right into me. «But I'll help you,» she cried suddenly. «Was it that girl told you, you owed money for food?» I nodded and she glowed. «Oh, I'll help, never fear! I never liked that girl: she's brazen and conceited and-oh! Why did you walk with her?»
«She wanted to see the university,» I said, «and I could not well refuse her.» «Oh, pay her,» she cried, «but don't walk with her; she's a common thing. Fancy her mentioning money to you, my dear!»
That same evening I got a note from Lorna, saying her husband wanted to see me. I met the little man in the sitting room and he proposed that I should come to his rooms every evening after supper and sit in a chair near the door reading, but with a Colt's revolver handy so that no one could rob him and get away with the plunder.
«I'd feel safer,» he ended up, «and my wife tells me you're a sure shot and used to a wild life. What do you say? I'd give you sixty dollars a month and more than half the time you'd be free before midnight.» «It's very kind of you,» I exclaimed with hot cheeks,
«and very kind of Mrs. Mayhew, too: I'll do it and I beg you to believe that no one will bother you and get away with a whole skin,» and so it was settled. Aren't women wonderful! In half a day she had solved my difficulty
