HISTORY III.—­I had become good looking.  For a time I knew what it was to have loving looks from every woman I met, and being saner and healthier I would seem to be moving in a divine atmosphere of color and fragrance, pearly teeth and bright eyes.  Even the old women with daughters looked at me amiably—­married women with challenge and maidens with Paradise in their eyes.

“I was standing one morning at St. Peter’s corner, with two young friends, when a girl went by, coming over from the Roman Catholic cathedral.  When she had passed she looked back, with that imperious swing that is almost a command, at me, as my friends distinctly admitted.  They advised me to follow her; I did so, and she turned a pretty, blushing face and pair of dark gray eyes, with just the kind of eyebrows I liked:  brown, very level, rather thick, but long.  Her teeth and mouth were perfect, and she spoke with a slight Irish brogue.  She let me do all the talking while she took my measure.  God knows what she saw in me!  I spoke in an affected manner, I remember, imitating some swell character I had seen on the stage a night or two before, but I was wise enough not to talk too much and to behave myself.  She promised to meet me again and made the appointment.  She was a school-teacher and engaged to be married to some one else.  She meant to amuse herself her own way before she married.  The second night I met her she allowed me to kiss her as much as I liked and promised all her favors for the third night.  We took a long walk, and in the dark she gave herself to me, but I hurt her so much I had to stop two or three times.  She had had connection only once, years before, when at school herself.  She was inclined to be sensual, but she was young, fresh, and pretty, and her kisses turned my head.  I fell genuinely in love with her and told her so, one night when she was particularly fascinating, with the tears in my eyes; and her face met mine with equal love.  The first night or two I had felt no pleasure—­whether through years of self-abuse or not I do not know,—­but this night my whole being was excited.  I met her once and sometimes twice a week and was always thinking of her.  My sister saw me looking love-sick one day and I heard her say ‘He’s in love,’ which rather flattered me, and I looked more love-sick and idiotic than ever.  It was all wrong and perverted.  She continued to meet her fiance, and intended to marry him.  We both spoke of ‘him’ as an adultress speaks of her husband.  That high level of tears and childlike joy in our youth and love was never reached again.  But I realized her sex, her kisses, her presence—­after all those years of horror (if she had only known)—­more even than the sexual act itself; while she, as time went on, commenced to show a curiosity which I thought desecrating; she liked to examine—­to ‘let her hand stray,’ were her words.  Even her beauty seemed impaired some nights and I