She had been so since twice by her protector, and had stopped it; but so soon as they were married he said they would have children. It was one of the reasons why he wished to marry her.

All this time I was in full favour with women, was in the prime of life, kind, sympathetic, thought handsome by women, and manly also. I see clearly now, how I could have had no end of other women without paying, but scarcely saw my opportunities then; and though I may have many instances to show, that my love was all that was wanted by some who threw themselves in my way, I can scarcely tell of them here. This luck ran over full ten years of my life, as nearly as I can recollect. During nearly four years of that, I was in love with Sarah who did not return it, but who used her power with moderation on the whole, though she tyrannized over me.

I would not see nor have Sarah for weeks after my last rupture with her, but could not help calling at J.*** s Street. I liked the scene of so much pleasure to me, to hear the click of the street-door as it opened, the rustle of petticoats going upstairs, the heavy step after them, the demand for a room, the reply, “First-floor front, sir.”

(I add now what on reading over the manuscript I do not find, — it is a needful addition written twenty years later.

(When Sarah knew that I was fully aware of her occupations and habits, she changed, talked with me about artists' models, statuary, and so forth, and about her favourite poses as well, for she liked that work. To get me out of ill temper which her tyranny now often put me in, she would pose naked, all but silk stockings and her lovely little kid boots. It was an exquisite sight which almost directly made me mad to possess her. My prick swelled, stood out, lifting my shirt till I raised it, and rushed to feel her. Then laughing at my excitement she would alter her pose, till off went my shirt, she laid hold of my prick, I her cunt, and getting on to the bed I clasped her in my arms, and fucked her. Posing naked before me made her feel lewed and want me, she confessed, slow as she was at such confessions. “There,” said she one day when she saw my stiff prick, “that's what would have happened if we had posed naked in Brussels.” Every man in the troupe had at one time or another solicited her favours privately, but she never told her own man that, for fear of a row.

(She generally posed thus after we had dined, and when what lust was in her constitution usually came out; I learned how to test her cunt-cravings in a simple way. Directly we got to the bedroom after dining she always piddled. I pushed my prick (stiffening in anticipation) in her face as she sat on the pot. If lustful she laid hold of it laughing, and pulled the foreskin backward and forward saying, “ah! — ahah! — look at it, — it's ready”; — if not, and she was thinking only of getting away soon, she pushed it away, saying, “Can't you wait now; — what beasts you men are; what pleasure can it give you to push that ugly thing in my face?” But who can give a reason for any baudy tricks, — they give pleasure, or they would not be done, by all men and women.

(Sometimes when she was posing I used to peep, trying to see more than the hair of the motte, and the dark shadow in the bum-furrow. Quite toward the end of our acquaintance I got her to pose in a lewedly suggestive attitude, but she never would open her cunt-lips herself, nor let me look well inside. She would leave me angry, rather than permit it. “It's not made to look at, — pray go on swearing,” she would say as she dressed herself. “I'm going, — it's ten o'clock.”

(Indeed her sexual orifice did not even then seem to me so handsome as those of other women. It was fat, large outside, with nymphae showing from clitoris to the vulva. Perhaps she knew that. It was loose in-side, must have been low down, and there was some-thing about it which I never understood, and therefore can't describe. Scarcely any other woman yet that I can recollect uncunted me in the throes of pleasure as she did, when she enjoyed the prick, and was fucking energetically. “Damn it, it's out, — oh! put it in, I was just coming,” were exclamations then made simultaneously by us.

(What made me so madly in love with her therefore, it is difficult to say. It must have been the perfection of her form, which enraptured me directly I saw it, and even to the last when she got too fat. Besides she had a quiet, comfortable, companionable manner, unlike a gay woman's; and at that time though I liked a genial lewedness in a woman, open flagrant baudiness rather revolted me, and till lust stirred me fully up I was half chaste in my words, even with them. “Let me look at it, — show it me,” were more frequently my words than stronger ones. Nothing I said in those days excepting in highly wrought moments was comparable to my lascivious utterances now, when no language I find too plain to express the wants and acts of those organs which give us all the highest pleasure, both physically and mentally. I had not then learnt all the pleasure copulation is capable of, that unrestrained nature in coition is the best. The absurdity of calling any-thing indecent or improper, which men and women may like to say or do together when in private, had not occurred to me. I now believe that it matters not whether what they do be called unnatural, or beastly, or not. So long as both like it and enjoy it, it is natural to them, concerns no one else, is the instincts of their nature, and is to them proper.)

And now to my narrative. Sometimes if Hannah was not in the parlour, I would peep and see the happy couples going upstairs, the women generally first. If late they were often a little noisy, and made a liberal display of leg to the men following. Late at night if women were there, Hannah would then not let me in unless some of my female friends were there. When Hannah would not let me peep, I at times threatened not to make up her accounts. That threat was often successful, I never told any one for many years afterward about the accounts.

“Sarah is anxious to see you,” said Hannah one night, “so anxious.” I saw her, conquered, and we made it up. Soon after she was in the family way again, she said by her husband; but she would not be plagued with another child. She let it go on for a month or so, and during that time fucked freely, keeping my prick and my sperm up her as long as I wished it. I became fully convinced that sexually she was cold, though a good mother and wife; but I loved her delicious form, and if she would lay in artistically free-andeasy attitudes whilst I talked to her, was content. She never cared about baudy pictures. After dinner I had poked her, and we were lying half naked together, she would suddenly feel her clitoris for a minute, then say, “Come nearer, dear,” — that meant she would feel my prick for minutes, and then fuck, — fuck was the or-der. After her spend she got cold again, the dinner heated her, and when I had cooled her cunt, she was cool to me.

After a time either they grew tired of the shop or did not make enough money, for they started on a tour in the provinces with a troupe. Hannah said Mavis was too lazy to stick to his trade, and preferred either posing, or living on Sarah's earnings. I was left unhappy again.

Again Mrs. Fisher appeared, and her modest lasciviousness again mastered my senses. I was getting accustomed to her, when Sarah came back. They had money, the shop business had gone, but now they at-tended to that. Sarah was always there, I used to see her in it, for though its whereabouts was kept secret at first, it was ultimately told me. I never went into it, but used to linger outside it just for the pleasure of looking at her, even though perhaps the same night I was to meet her. Such was my infatuation. She again met me, but only for as long as she liked. She said she met only me, and I ,believed it to be nearly true. She was certainly never in the streets that I could discover. He never was in the shop. She told me he was always in the workshop. She might have done a little belly-bumping business by introductions, but Hannah, now quite at my service, declared that she never introduced her. Then Sarah was in the family way again. Said she, “I can't tell if it's yours, or his.”