woman) recognized the difficulty for English girls of getting satisfactorily married, and determined, if possible, to shield us from disappointment by turning our thoughts in a different direction.  Theoretically the idea was perhaps good, but in practice it proved useless.  The natural desires were there.  Disappointment and disillusion followed their repression none the less surely for having altered their natural shape.  I think the love I had for my mother was almost sexual, as to be with her was a keen pleasure, and to be long away from her an almost unendurable pain.  She used to talk to us a good deal on all sorts of subjects, but she never troubled about education in the ordinary sense.  When 9 years old I had been taught nothing except to read and write.  She never forbade us to read anything, but if by accident we got hold of a book of which she did not approve she used to say:  ’I think that is rather a silly story, don’t you?’ We were so eager to come up to her standard of taste that we at once imagined we thought it silly, too.  In the same way she discouraged ideas about love or marriage, not by suggesting there was anything wrong or improper about them, but by implying great contempt for girls who thought about lovers, etc.  Up to the age of about 20 I had a vague general impression that love was very well for ordinary women, but far beneath the dignity of a somewhat superior person like myself.  To show how little it entered my thoughts I may add that, up to 17, I fancied a woman got a child by being kissed on the lips by a man.  Hence all the fuss in novels about the kiss on the mouth.

“When I was 9 years old I began to feel a great craving for scientific knowledge. A Child’s Guide to Science, which I discovered at a second-hand book-stall (and which, by the way, informed me that heat is due to a substance called caloric), became a constant companion.  In order to learn about light and gravitation, I saved up my money and ordered (of all books) Newton’s Principia, shedding bitter tears when I found I could not understand a word of it.  At the same time I was horribly ashamed of this desire for knowledge.  I got such books as I could surreptitiously and hid them in odd corners.  Why, I cannot imagine, as no one would have objected, but, on the contrary, I should have been helped to suitable books.

“My sisters and I were all violently argumentative, but our quarrels were all on abstract subjects.  We saw little of other children and made no friendships, preferring each other’s society to that of outsiders.  When I was about 10 a girl of the same age came to stay with us for a few days.  When we went to bed the first night she asked me if I ever played with myself, whereupon I took a great dislike to her.  No sexual ideas or feelings were excited.  When still quite a child, however, I had feelings of excitement which I now recognize as sexual.  Such feelings always came to me in bed (at least I cannot remember