“Indeed, I may say my sexual nature seemed to be dying out.  When I had been married less than six months I discovered that sexual intercourse with my wife no longer meant what sexual intercourse used to mean—­no excitement or exaltation or ecstasy.  My wife perhaps contributed to this by her attitude.  She confessed afterward to me that for the first week or so she positively dreaded bedtime, so physically painful was intercourse to her; that it was many weeks, if not months, before she experienced the orgasm.  For the first year and more of marriage she could not endure touching my penis.  This at first disappointed me; then annoyed and finally almost disgusted me.

    “Later on, she learned to experience the orgasm.  But she was very
    undemonstrative during the act, and it was seldom that the orgasm
    occurred simultaneously; she took a much longer time.

“I ceased to think about sexual matters.  When I had been married about three years I was aware that, in my case, marriage meant the loss of all mad ecstasy in the act.  I knew that if I had no work to do, and plenty of money, and temptation came my way, I should like to have another woman.  But there was no particular woman to enchain my fancy and I did not have time or money or inclination to hunt for one.

    “At times I masturbated.  Sometimes I did this to the
    accompaniment of homosexual desires or memories of the past.  Then
    I got my wife to masturbate me.

    “About four years after marriage I got a woman from Piccadilly
    Circus to do fellatio.  I had never had this done before.  She
    did not do it genuinely, but used her fingers.

“As stated above various anxieties, the fact that I could always satisfy my physical desires, all served to calm me.  I was also interested in my work and had become ambitious to improve my position and was very energetic.

“On the whole, notwithstanding money worries, the first four or five years of my married life were the happiest in my life.  Certainly I was very free from sexual desires; and the general effect of marriage was to make me economical, energetic, ambitious, and unselfish.  I was certainly overworked.  I seldom got to bed before 1 or 2; my meals were irregular; and I became worried and nervous.  At the beginning of my fifth year of married life I got run down, and had a severe illness, and at one time my life was in danger, but I had a fairly rapid convalescence.

“My illness was critical, in more senses than one.  My convalescence was accompanied by a remarkable recrudescence of my sexual feelings.  I will trace this in detail:  1.  As I got well—­but while still in bed—­I found myself experiencing, almost continually, violent erections.  These were at first of an