To commit a sin is easy; to confess it to your priest is for many women an absolute deterrent. A few days later, I think, I got a letter from Smith that determined me to go to Philadelphia as soon as my boardings provided me with sufficient money. I wrote and told him I'd come and cheered him up. I had not long to wait. Early that fall Bradlaugh came to lecture in Liberty Hall on the French Revolution-a giant of a man with a great head, rough-hewn, irregular features and stentorian voice: no better figure of a rebel could be imagined. I knew he had been an English private soldier for a dozen years, but I soon found that, in spite of his passionate revolt against the Christian religion and all its cheap moralistic conventions he was a convinced individualist and saw nothing wrong in the despotism of money which had already established itself in Britain, though condemned by Carlyle at the end of his French Revolution as the vilest of all tyrannies. Bradlaugh's speech taught me that a notorious and popular man, earnest, and gifted, too, and intellectually honest, might be fifty years before his time in one respect and fifty years behind the best opinion of the age in another province of thought. In the great conflict of our day between the «Haves» and the «Have-nots,» Bradlaugh played no part whatever. He wasted his great powers in a vain attack on the rotten branches of the Christian tree, while he should have assimilated the spirit of Jesus and used it to gild his loyalty to truth. About this time, Kate wrote that she would not be back for some weeks: she declared she was feeling another woman. I felt tempted to write, «So am I, stay as long as you please,» but instead I wrote an affectionate, tempting letter, for I had a real affection for her, I discovered. When she returned a few weeks later, I felt as if she were new and unknown and I had to win her again; but as soon as my hand touched her sex, the strangeness disappeared and she gave herself to me with renewed zest.
I teased her to tell me just what she felt and at length she consented. «Begin with the first time,» I begged, «and then tell what you felt in Kansas City.» «It will be very hard,» she said. «I'd rather write it for you.» «That'll do just as well,» I replied, and here is the story she sent me the next day. «I think the first time you had me,» she began, «I felt more curiosity than desire:
I had so often tried to picture it all to myself. When I saw your sex I was astonished, for it looked very big to me and I wondered whether you could really get it into my sex, which I knew was just big enough for my finger to go in. Still I did want to feel your sex pushing into me, and your kisses and the touch of your hand on my sex made me even more eager. When you slipped the head of your sex into mine, it hurt dreadfully; it was almost like a knife cutting into me, but the pain for some reason seemed to excite me and I pushed forward so as to get you further in me; I think that's what broke my maidenhead. At first I was disappointed because I felt no thrill, only the pain; but, when my sex became all wet and open and yours could slip in and out easily, I began to feel real pleasure. I liked the slow movement best; it excited me to feel the head of your sex just touching the lips of mine and, when you pushed in slowly all the way, it gave me a gasp of breathless delight: when you drew your sex out, I wanted to hold it in me. And the longer you kept on, the more pleasure you gave me. For hours afterwards, my sex was sensitive; if I rubbed it ever so gently, it would begin to itch and burn. «But that night in the hotel at Kansas City I really wanted you and the pleasure you gave me then was much keener than the first time. You kissed and caressed me for a few minutes and I soon felt my love-dew coming and the button of my sex began to throb. As you thrust your shaft in and out of me, I felt a strange sort of pleasure: every little nerve on the inside of my thighs and belly seemed to thrill and quiver; it was almost a feeling of pain. At first the sensation was not so intense, but, when you stopped and made me wash, I was shaken by quick, short spasms in my thighs, and my sex was burning and throbbing; I wanted you more than ever. «When you began the slow movement again, I felt the same sensations in my thighs and belly, only more keenly, and, as you kept on, the pleasure became so intense that I could scarcely bear it.
Suddenly you rubbed your sex against mine and my button began to throb; I could almost feel it move. Then you began to move your sex quickly in and out of me; in a moment I was breathless with emotion and I felt so faint and exhausted that I suppose I fell asleep for a few minutes, for I knew nothing more till I felt the cold water trickling down my face. When you began again, you made me cry, perhaps because I was all dissolved in feeling and too, too happy. Ah, love is divine: isn't it?» Kate was really of the highest woman-type, mother and mistress in one. She used to come down and spend the night with me oftener than ever and on one of these occasions she found a new word for her passion. She declared she felt her womb move in yearning for me when I talked my best or recited poetry to her in what I had christened her holy week. Kate it was who taught me first that women could be even more moved and excited by words than by deeds.
Once, I remember, when I had talked sentimentally, she embraced me of her own accord and we had each other with wet eyes. Another effect of Smith's absence was important, for it threw me a good deal with Miss Stephens. I soon found that she had inherited the best of her father's brains and much of his strength of character. If she had married Smith, she might have done something noteworthy; as it was, she was very attractive and well-read as a girl and would have made Smith, I am sure, a most excellent wife. Once and once only I tried to hint to her that her sweetness to Smith might do him harm physically; but the suspicion of reproof made her angry and she evidently couldn't or wouldn't understand what I meant without a physical explanation, which she would certainly have resented. I had to leave her to what she would have called her daimon, for she was as prettily pedantic as Tennyson's Princess, or any other mid-Victorian heroine. Her brother, Ned, too, I came to know pretty well. He was a tall, handsome youth with fine grey eyes; a good athlete, but of commonplace mind. The father was the most Interesting of the whole family, were it only for his prodigious conceit. He was of noble appearance: a large, handsome head with silver grey hairs setting off a portly figure well above middle height. In spite of his assumption of superiority, I felt him hide-bound in thought, for he accepted all the familiar American conventions, believing, or rather knowing, that the American people, «the good old New England stock in particular, were the salt of the earth, the best breed to be seen anywhere.»
It showed his brains that he tried to find a reason for this belief. «English oak is good,» he remarked one day sententiously, «but American hickory is tougher still. Reasonable, too, this belief of mine,» he added, «for the last glacial period skinned all the good soil off of New England and made it bitterly hard to get a living; and the English who came out for conscience sake were the pick of the Old Country; and they were forced for generations to scratch a living out of the poorest kind of soil with the worst climate in the world, and hostile Indians all round to sharpen their combativeness and weed out the weaklings and wastrels.» There was a certain amount of truth In his contention, but this was the nearest to an original thought I ever heard him express; and his intense patriotic fervor moved me to doubt his intelligence. I was delighted to find that Smith rated him just as I did: «A first rate lawyer, I believe,» was his judgment;
«a sensible, kindly man.» «A little above middle height,» I interpreted; and Smith added smiling, «And considerably above average weight: he would never have done anything notable in literature or thought.» As the year wore on, Smith's letters called for me more and more insistently and at length I went to join him in Philadelphia.