bring off at all, and bring themselves off, like my wife. They want to be the active party.—Then there's the sort that's just dead inside: but dead: and they know it. Then there's the sort that puts you out before you really 'come,' and go on writhing their loins till they bring themselves off against your thighs. But they're mostly the Lesbian sort. It's astonishing how Lesbian women are, consciously or unconsciously. Seems to me they're nearly all Lesbian."
"And do you mind?" asked Connie.
"I could kill them. When I'm with a woman who's really Lesbian, I fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her."
"And what do you do?"
"Just get away as fast as I can."
"But do you think Lesbian women any worse than homosexual men?"
"I do! Because I've suffered more from them. In the abstract, I've no idea. When I get with a Lesbian woman, whether she knows she's one or not, I see red: No, no! But I wanted to have nothing to do with any woman any more. I wanted to keep to myself: keep my privacy and my decency."
He looked pale, and his brows were sombre.
"And were you sorry when I came along?" she asked.
"I was sorry and I was glad."
"And what are you now?"
"I'm sorry, from the outside: all the complications and the ugliness and recrimination that's bound to come, sooner or later. That's when my blood sinks, and I'm low. But when my blood comes up, I'm glad. I'm even triumphant. I was really getting bitter. I thought there was no real sex left: never a woman who'd really 'come' naturally with a man: except black women, and somehow, well, we're white men: and they're a bit like mud."
"And now, are you glad of me?" she asked.
"Yes! When I can forget the rest. When I can't forget the rest, I want to get under the table and die."
"Why under the table?"
"Why?" he laughed. "Hide, I suppose. Baby!"
"You do seem to have had awful experiences of women," she said.
"You see, I couldn't fool myself. That's where most men manage. They take an attitude, and accept a lie. I could never fool
