ng with eagerness, the stories of Haidee, of
Antonia and Julia--the tale of the dream of Dudu. I dwelt in a
musk-scented room of imagination. Silver fountains played about me.
Light forms flowed and undulated in white draperies over mosaiced
pavements ... flashing dark eyes shone mysteriously and amorously,
starry through curtains and veils.

My every thought was alert with naive, speculative curiosity concerning
the mystery of woman.

Through Byron I learned about Moore. I procured the latter's _Lalla
Rookh_, his odes of Anacreon.

From Byron and Moore I built up an adolescent ideal of
woman,--exquisitely sensual and sexual, and yet an angel, superior to
men: an ideal of a fellow creature who was both a living, breathing
mystery and a walking sweetmeat ... a white creation moved and actuated
by instinct and intuition--a perpetually inexplicable ecstasy and
madness to man.

I drew more and more apart to myself. Always looked upon as queer by the
good, bourgeois families that surrounded us, I was now considered madder
still.

* * * * *

How wonderful it would be to become a hermit on some far mountain side,
wearing a grey robe, clear-browed and calmly speculative under the
stars--or, maybe,--more wonderful: a singer for men, a travelling
minstrel--in each case, whether minstrel or hermit, whether teaching
great doctrines or singing great songs for all the world--to have come
to me, as a pilgrim seeking enlightenment, the most beautiful maiden in
the world, one who was innocent of what man meant. And together we would
learn the mystery of life, and live in mutual purity and innocence.

* * * * *

The strangeness of my physical person lured me. I marvelled at,
scrutinised intimately the wonder of myself. I was insatiable in my
curiosities.

* * * * *

My discovery of my body, and my books, held me in equal bondage. I
neglected my work in the drying room. My father was vexed. He'd hunt me
out of the obscure corners back of the hanging sheets of composite where
I hid, absorbed in myself and the book I held, and would run me back to
work.

* * * * *

One day, in the factory, two other boys on an errand from another
department, came back where I sat, in a hidden nook, reading Thompson's
_Seasons_. One of them spit over my shoulder, between the leaves. I
leaped to my feet, infuriated, and