The actively inverted woman usually differs from the woman of the class just mentioned in one fairly essential character:  a more or less distinct trace of masculinity.  She may not be, and frequently is not, what would be called a “mannish” woman, for the latter may imitate men on grounds of taste and habit unconnected with sexual perversion, while in the inverted woman the masculine traits are part of an organic instinct which she by no means always wishes to accentuate.  The inverted woman’s masculine element may, in the least degree, consist only in the fact that she makes advances to the woman to whom she is attracted and treats all men in a cool, direct manner, which may not exclude comradeship, but which excludes every sexual relationship, whether of passion or merely of coquetry.  Usually the inverted woman feels absolute indifference toward men, and not seldom repulsion.  And this feeling, as a rule, is instinctively reciprocated by men.  At the same time bisexual women are at least as common as bisexual men.

HISTORY XXXIV.—­Miss S., aged 38, living in a city of the United States, a business woman of fine intelligence, prominent in professional and literary circles.  Her general health is good, but she belongs to a family in which there is a marked neuropathic element.  She is of rather phlegmatic temperament, well poised, always perfectly calm and self-possessed, rather retiring in disposition, with gentle, dignified bearing.

She says she cannot care for men, but that all her life has been “glorified and made beautiful by friendship with women,” whom she loves as a man loves women.  Her character is, however, well disciplined, and her friends are not aware of the nature of her affections.  She tries not to give all her love to one person, and endeavors (as she herself expresses it) to use this “gift of loving” as a stepping-stone to high mental and spiritual attainments.  She is described by one who has known her for several years as “having a high nature, and instincts unerringly toward high things.”

HISTORY XXXV.—­Miss B., artist, of German ancestry on the paternal side.  Among her brothers and sisters, one is of neurotic temperament and another is inverted.  She is herself healthy.  She has no repugnance to men, and would even like to try marriage, if the union were not permanent, but she has seldom felt any sexual attraction to a man.  In one exceptional instance, early in life, realizing that she was not adapted for heterosexual relationships, she broke off the engagement she had formed.  Much later in life, she formed a more permanent relationship with a man of congenial tastes.

She is attracted to women of various kinds, though she recognizes that there are some women to whom only men are attracted.  Many years since she had a friend to whom she was very strongly attached, but the physical manifestations do not appear to have become pronounced.  After that