Are you?"
"Quite ... don't be ashamed ... I know much about life that you do not
know ... tell me all."
* * * * *
So I told her all about myself ... my ambition ... my struggles ... my
morbidity ... my lack of experience with girls and women....
"And I must have experience soon ... it's obsessing me ... it can't last
this way much longer ... I shall go mad."
And I rehearsed to her a desperate resolve I had made ... to find a
woman of the streets, in New York, when I went in, the ensuing week ...
and force myself, no matter how I loathed it--
I buried my head in her lap and sobbed hysterically.
Then I apologised--"forgive me if I have been too frank!"
"I am a radical woman ... Penton and I both believe in the theory of
free love, though we happen to be married ... what you have told me is
all sweet and natural to me ... only--you must not do what you say
you'll do--in New York!--"
"I must, or--" and I paused, to go on in a lower, embarrassed voice ...
"Do--do you know what else I thought of--dreamed of--?
"In Paris--I understand--men live with women as a matter of course--
"You see--" I was hot with shame to the very ears, "you see--there, you
know,--I thought if I went there I would find some pretty little French
girl that I would take to live with me ... in some romantic attic in the
Montmartre district .
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