she would rather have died than confess it to me when we first met.  We would often devote our Sundays to having a picnic as we termed our lustful bouts, stimulating ourselves with wine.  Her temper was not improved thereby (though her fits entirely stopped for a twelvemonth)—­we had wordy warfares, but we made it up again always with tears.  Nor did I allow myself to deteriorate without reactions and excursions into better things.  I was always reading Emerson; it was he who rescued me from orthodox Christianity and taught me to trust in myself and in Nature.  I have never ceased this struggle towards better things to this day.  There, in a nutshell, is my life; I have always been defeated when temptation came, but I have never ceased to struggle.  I determined to be more abstemious in sexual indulgence and asked her to help me.  She agreed willingly, for she was easily led.  Whenever we fell back again into excess it was my fault.

At a theatrical performance we first met a Miss T., a young German who sang.  She was about 25, with modest, quiet and engaging manners.  A. and she became very friendly.  I liked her; she was tall, dark and lithe, but had bad teeth.

I had been ill and at this time A. and I had a quarrel, my temper suddenly breaking out in murderous frenzy.  I called her names and finally put her outside the house, telling her to go to her mother.  I suffered a very hell of remorse and misery.  Everything in the quiet, lonely house reminded me of her, seemed fragrant of her; my anguish became so keen I could not stop in the house, though I was just as wretched walking about.  I kept this up for two days, when I met her coming to look for me.  One look was enough—­“A.!” “Pet!” in broken sobs—­and in tears we kissed and made it up.  Miss T. was with her, and I greeted her, too, with happy tears in my eyes.  Another time, when A. was giving way to her temper, and one would have thought all love was dead, I said “Don’t you love me then?” and the word alone was a talisman, her face changed, she held out her arms and began to sob quietly....  She accepted an offer to travel with a small theatrical company who were going up-country.  She was not looking well when I left and after a time I received a telegram telling me to come to her at once as she was ill.  Dreading all sorts of things I borrowed my fare and went to her.  I knew nothing of women, of their point of view and different code of honor, and was very far from the attitude of Guy de Maupassant who said he liked women all the better for their charmingly deceitful ways.  A. wanted to see me and had taken the surest means to ensure my coming.  I was angry at first, but she looked so well and was so loving that I could not be angry long.

One day when I was working the landlady came in and began talking about A. and her conduct before I came.  She had gone into the actors’ rooms at all hours, the woman said, and drank and been