t not an ordinary little girl like myself, but
a marvellous creature of unlimited possibilities and virtues. She
even had wings and flew with such ease from the tops of the highest
buildings, and floated so delightfully over my favourite fields and
brooks that I found it hard to believe that I myself did not actually
fly. What glorious things we did together, what courage we had,
nothing daunted us! I cared very little to read books of adventure,
for our own adventures were more wonderful than anything I ever
read.

Not only had I wings, but when I was my other self I was extremely
good, and the Angel with the Book was then never able to make a
single adverse record of me. And then how easy it was to be good:
how delightful, no difficulties whatever! As we both grew older the
actual wings were folded up and put away. The virtues remained,
but we led an intensely interesting life, and a certain high standard
of life was evolved which was afterwards useful to me.

When, later on, I grew up and my parents allowed me to have as
many friends as I wanted, and when I became exceedingly gay, I
still retained the habit of this double existence; it remained with me
even after my marriage and kept me out of mischief. If I found
myself temporarily dull or in some place I did not care for, clothed
in the body of my double, like the wind, I went where I listed. I
would go to balls and parties, or with equal ease visit the mountains
and watch the sunset or the incomparable beauties of dawn, making
delicate excursions into the strange, the wonderful, and the sublime.
I gathered crystal flowers in invisible worlds, and the scent of those
flowers was Romance.

All this vivid imagination sometimes made my mind over-active: I
could not sleep. "Count sheep jumping over a hurdle," I was advised.
But it did not answer. I found the most effective way was to think
seriously of my worst sins--my mind immediately slowed down,
became a discreet blank--I slept!

I grew tall and healthy. At sixteen I received my first offer of
marriage and with it my first vision of the love and passion of men. I
recoiled from it with great shyness and aversion. Yet I became
deeply interested in men, and remained so for very many years.
From that time on I never was without a lover till my marriage.

II

At seventeen my "lessons" came to an end. I had not learnt much,
but I could speak four languages with great fluency. I learnt perhaps
more from listening