on her, and was doing what I thought right in spite of the most painful pressure on her to do wrong; and that she needed all the support and comfort I could give her.  It seemed to me, after our conversation, that the right path for me lay not in giving way to fears and scruples, but in giving my friend straightforwardly all the love I could and all the kinds of love I could.  I decided to keep my eyes open for danger, but meanwhile to go on.

“We were living alone together at the time, and thenceforward we did as we liked doing.  As soon as we could, we moved to a bed where we could sleep together all night.  In the day when no one was there we sat as close together as we wished, which was very close.  We kissed each other as often as we wanted to kiss each other, which was very many times a day.

“The results of this, so far as I can see, have been wholly good.  We love each other warmly, but no temptation to nastiness has ever come, and I cannot see now that it is at all likely to come.  With custom, the localized physical excitement has practically disappeared, and I am no longer obsessed by imagined embraces.  The spiritual side of our affection seems to have grown steadily stronger and more profitable since the physical side has, been allowed to take its natural place.”

A class in which homosexuality, while fairly distinct, is only slightly marked, is formed by the women to whom the actively inverted woman is most attracted.  These women differ, in the first place, from the normal, or average, woman in that they are not repelled or disgusted by lover-like advances from persons of their own sex.  They are not usually attractive to the average man, though to this rule there are many exceptions.  Their faces may be plain or ill-made, but not seldom they possess good figures:  a point which is apt to carry more weight with the inverted woman than beauty of face.  Their sexual impulses are seldom well marked, but they are of strongly affectionate nature.  On the whole, they are women who are not very robust and well developed, physically or nervously, and who are not well adapted for child-bearing, but who still possess many excellent qualities, and they are always womanly.  One may, perhaps, say that they are the pick of the women whom the average man would pass by.  No doubt, this is often the reason why they are open to homosexual advances, but I do not think it is the sole reason.  So far as they may be said to constitute a class, they seem to possess a genuine, though not precisely sexual, preference for women over men, and it is this coldness, rather than lack of charm, which often renders men rather indifferent to them.