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,