no one moment, hypothesis merged into reality:  I myself was inverted.  That occasional and fictitious inversion had never, I believe, superposed this true inversion; rather a true inversion, those many years dormant, had simply responded finally to a stimulus strong and prolonged enough, as a man awakens when he is loudly called.

“In presenting myself thus sexually transformed, I do not aver having had at the outset any definitive inclination.  The instinct so freshly evolved remained for a while obscure.  Its primary expression was a feebly sensuous interest in the physical character of boys—­in their feminine resemblances especially.  To this interest I opposed no discountenance; for wantonness with women under many and diverse conditions having long ago medicined my sexual conscience to lethargy, no access of reasons came to me now for its refreshment.  On the other hand, intellectual delight in the promises of the new world, as well as sensuality, conduced to its deliberate exploration.  Still, for a year, the yearning settled with true lust upon no object more concrete than youths whose only habitation was my fancy.

“A young surgeon, having read my copy of Psychopathia Sexualis, fell one evening to discussing inverts with such relish that I inquired ingenuously if he himself was one.  He colored, whether confirmatively or otherwise I could not guess, in spite of his vehement no.  Presently he very subtly recanted his denial.  But to his counter-question I maintained my own no, lest he propose some sexual act, a point the esthetics of my developing inversion would not yet concede, the boys of my imagination being still predominant.

“One evening, soon after this, he convoyed me to several of the cafe’s where inverts are accustomed to foregather.  These trysting places were much alike:  a long hall, with sparse orchestra at one end, marble-topped tables lining the walls, leaving the floor free for dancing.  Round the tables sat boys and youths, Adonises both by art and nature, ready for a drink or a chat with the chance Samaritan, and shyly importunate for the pleasures for which, upstairs, were small rooms to let.  One of the boys, supported by the orchestra, sang the ‘Jewel Song’ out of ‘Faust.’  His voice had the limpid, treble purity of a clarinet, and his face the beauty of an angel.  The song concluded, we invited him to our table, where he sat sipping neat brandy, as he mockingly encountered my book-begotten queries.  The boy-prostitutes gracing these halls, he apprised us, bore fanciful names, some of well-known actresses, others of heroes in fiction, his own being Dorian Gray.  Rivals, he complained, had assumed the same appellation, but he was the original Dorian; the others were jealous impostors.  His curly hair was golden; his cheeks were pink; his lips, coral red, parted incessantly to reveal the glistening pearliness of his teeth.  Yet, though