cial
theories, in these ideas about the proletaire, about art and literature;
and I began to read books in a far different spirit from what I used--I
began to see in them truth about life, and to love this truth, whatever
it was. And I loved the freedom of the talk, and, above all, I loved the
feeling that from the highest point of view I was not an outcast, and
that the people who seemed to me the best did not so regard me. It
helped to give me the self-respect which every human being needs, I
think.

"I thought for a long time that I was very lucky indeed to get admitted
into this atmosphere. And, indeed, I know I _was_ lucky, but there came
a time when, for a while, I was very unhappy, not in the society of the
radicals--I always loved that--but among these particular people,
because they could not, after all, rid themselves of some conservative
prejudices. After a while I began to see that even those enlightened
people really had contempt for what I had been, or for my ignorance,
perhaps for both.

"This family, with whom we were staying, was supposed to have broad and
liberal ideas, and its members prided themselves on the fact that they
really put their theories into practice. Their home was run on a sort of
communistic basis, and the men and women who lived there were not tied
to each other by any legal bonds, for they believed in freedom of love.
They never made much noise about their ideas, or rather their practice,
and were what you might call refined or cultured anarchists.

"Terry and I had nothing in a worldly way, and we lived there on
'charity,' so to speak, though that word was, of course, never used. We
did, however, what work there was to be done in the household, trying in
this way to give some compensation in return for a bed to sleep on and
the simple food necessary to keep our bodies alive.

"Now, after a while, I began to feel crushed, oppressed in this home,
among these cold, cold, refined people, although they were anarchists.
They could not help showing me their contempt: they made me feel
inferior. They never said one word that indicated such a feeling, but I
could feel it by their attitude, by the attitude even of the little
child in the house. They looked upon me much in the same way as my
former mistress used, when I was the servant in the house, except that
they were bound by their theories to give me a nominal respect and to
try charitably to improve my mind and make of me a philosoph