She had half dressed when I said I should like to do it again. “I hope you'll give me a little more, then.” — I doubled the fee. — “There it is, my dear — now let me look at your cunt.” In my impatience for her pleasure, I had before scarcely seen it. After inspection, I laid down by her side, fingering it and talking. She was in a service at * * * *, about two miles off. She gave name and place with seeming exactitude. The son of her mistress did it to her first, and only two months ago, she didn't know how she came to let him, he was always after her, trying to feel her and showing his thing.

One day, his mother being out, she let him have her. She supposed she liked him and perhaps she wanted it, or something, for somehow it was all over before she knew what she was about. She was astonished at her-self. She was the only servant, and he the only child. This all seems very natural to me now, for some of the women I have had the first of yielded, I believe, with-out intention. — Liking, kindness, and lewedness at the moment, made them yield to me.

Then she couldn't keep him away from her. When at home, (he had some occupation out), he was always at her, and she was frightened when he and his mother were both at home. She was foolish enough to let him go to her bed at night, and the mother caught them there together and fast asleep. — Out she was turned next morning without a character. The son came to see her now, and gave her all he could, she believed, but he was only nineteen, and his mother half kept him. “Don't make a noise please, I'm the only woman in the house. I knew them before I came, and they let me the room as a servant out of place, I didn't go on the streets till I'd spent all my money. — They know now what I do, but won't turn me out as long as no one comes to me in the day, and I don't bring men home if I can help.” It was a little tradesman's shop with three or four rooms over. This accounted for the room looking so different from the ordinary harlot's chamber, with its ragged, disorderly furniture, and trumpery ornaments.

The story interested me, it seemed quite likely, and was like a page out my own history in my youth. How I then managed to get into our servants has sometimes astonished me. “The fact is you wanted fucking and let him.” — Then, as I had twiddled her cunt about, I began to want to enter it, and had made her also want it as well, for she handled my prick and in a whisper, “Do it to me.” — “Do you want it?” — “Yes.” — Next minute our backsides were in motion, and we spent together. — “I've a good mind to sleep with you” — “I wish you could, but they won't have it here.” — Then I departed.

There was something about this woman that so pleased me that I wrote to her, naming the time, and went to her place two days afterwards. She met me outside the house. She had told me her name, which I found also was written in big letters inside the lid of her box. She'd had one man if lucky each night, she told me, not more, “But I scarcely get enough to live.” Yes, she spent with them — “Thinking about it makes you want to do it, but I wish I were dead.” — “Let's get into bed together.” — “If you like, but the sheets are not very clean, tho nobody's been in them but my-self, and I wash myself all over every day.” We stripped, and I fucked her three times. She was getting thin, she thought, thro fretting, but she was in very nice condition. She enjoyed my prick, which added to my pleasure, and I heard a lot more of her history, of her misery the first night she was turned out, and so on. I told her I should know by a careful look at her cunt if she'd been fucked longer than two months. “Two months and a fortnight ago I was a virgin, you may look as long as you like.”

I did, and am quite sure she hadn't been fucked long. I've had I can't say exactly how many virgins, tho I've written an account of all of them, but think a dozen and more, and have seen all their cunts after their defloration and some of them before. Certainly this woman's cunt looked as if it had been not long split, for the jagged edges were quite visible. I wished her to go home to her relatives, and gave her three pounds to go with. She said she would, and I think she did. I advised her to write from her home for a situation, and say she had never been in London.

I didn't go near Bertha for some days, feeling annoyed, and then took a fancy to watch her home from the shop, expecting she would go elsewhere; but for two nights she went straight and quickly home. Then I called at the shop again. “Oh,” said she, “I thought you were lost.” — Determined to tell her I had been with women, I began. — “I don't want to hear about your doings, tell them to some one else.” — I had a long conversation, in which I reminded her (people coming and interrupting frequently) of what I'd said, and done in the cab; to all of which she objected. — “You only came to dinner to get me to take you to the Argyle.” — “What of that? I knew what you wanted me to dine for.”

I left irritated with the young woman, yet with a stronger desire to have her than before, and a half be-lief that I was wrong in my estimate of her virtue. — That belief became much strengthened by going to the other shop, seeing the mistress there, speaking slightingly of Bertha's virtue, and getting a smart reply, that there wasn't a more virtuous, respectable girl in London, and that all her family were. “Aye — ye may talk, and chaff, but that's all the fun you'll get out of Bertha.”

I lived my usual life for a week, then went to Bertha's shop, and two nights after she again dined with me. Now I made all sorts of extravagant promises to induce her to sleep with me. I no longer minced the matter. — After what I had done and said previously in the cab, no modesty was needed. She took scarcely any notice of what I said — seemed not to hear it, sat reflecting, and then all at once, stroking my face with her hand, begged me to take her to the Argyle again, she would go away if I did not. — Immensely against my will, I took her there. She sat as before with veil down, completely hiding her features for a full hour, quite taciturn. Then suddenly she turned to me and with a shudder. “Let us go away — I've a horrible presentiment that one day I shall become one of these women,” and she almost dragged me out of the building.

“Come and have another glass of wine, you need not get back for an hour or more.” “Very well,” said she in a voice almost inaudible. — At a tavern she gulped down a glass quickly. — Outside I said, “Come with me, have pity on me, I love you so,” and with her arm in mine I led her in the direction of a baudy house. “That's not the way home,” said she, stopping. — I hailed a cab, determined to risk everything. I saw the girl liked me, and began, as I thought, to like her more than I cared to own to myself — or was it mere lust? Telling where to drive to, I put my arms round her the instant the cab moved and got my fingers on her slit; for an instant she struggled, and then was silent whilst I titillated her clitoris and besought her to let me have her, in the salacious words which come naturally to me when so placed, and I suppose to most men, when lust is powerful in them.

[She was a girl of great self possession, none ever knew better what she was about. In after years she shewed this under difficult circumstances, and that she was a true honest woman. — Lustful she was not, and the only reason I can assign for what followed is that she had an affection for me, and believed the promises I made her under the influence of lust, of a stong desire to have her, and no great belief in her virtue: promises I did not, could not, keep, and was punished for it.]

I stopped the cab at the end of the street, and, taking my arm, she walked quietly with me to the house. From the time I commenced frigging her to the time when the room door closed, she never uttered a word. — Now she looked round the room, then despairingly at me and said, “It's a Brothel, I shall come to be one of those women.” — It was said in a quiet tone, as if she had made up her mind to courses which would ensure her being one. [She never was.]