them at any other time) and were generally accompanied by a gradually increasing desire to make water.  For a long time I would not dare to get out of bed for fear of being scolded for staying awake, and only did so at last when actually compelled.  In the mean time the sexual excitement increased also, and I believe I thought the latter was the result of the former, or, perhaps, rather, that both were the same thing. (This was when I was about 7 or 8 years old.) So far as I can recollect, the excitement did not recur when the desire to make water had been gratified.  I seemed to remember wondering why thinking of certain things (I can’t remember what these were) should make one want to urinate. (In later life I have found that, if the bladder is not emptied before coitus, pleasure is often more intense.) There were also feelings, which I now recognize as sexual, in connection with ideas of whipping.

“As a child and girl I had very strong religious feelings (I should have now if I could believe in the reality of religion), which were absent in my sisters.  These feelings were much the same as I experienced later sexually; I felt toward God what I imagined I should like to feel to my husband if I married.  This, I fancy, is what usually occurs.  At 14 I went to a boarding-school where there were seventy girls between 7 and 19.  I think it goes to show that there is but very little sexual precocity among English girls that during the three years I stayed there I never heard a word the strictest mother would have objected to.  One or two of the older girls were occasionally a little sentimental, but on no occasion did I hear the physical side of things touched upon.  I think this is partly due to the amount of exercise we took.  When picturing my childhood I always see myself racing about, jumping walls, climbing trees.  In France and Italy I have been struck by the greater sedateness of Continental children.  Our idea of naughtiness consisted chiefly in having suppers in our bedrooms and sliding down the banisters after being sent to bed.  The first gratified our natural appetite, while the second supplied the necessary thrill in the fear of being caught.

“I made no violent friendships with the other girls, but I became much attached to the French governess.  She was 30, and a born teacher, very strict with all of us, and doubly so with me for fear of showing favoritism.  But she was never unjust, and I was rather proud of her severity and took a certain pleasure in being punished by her, the punishment always taking the form of learning by heart, which I rather liked doing.  So I had my thrill, excitement, I don’t quite know what to call it, without any very great inconvenience to myself.  Just before we left school the sexual instinct began to show itself in enthusiasm for art with a capital A, Ouida’s novels being mainly responsible.  My sister and I agreed that we would spend our lives traveling about France, Italy, and the Continent,