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Memoirs of a

so much asham'd and confounded was I at having seen him. Condemn'd then to stay till his departure should release me, I was greatly embarrass'd how to dispose of myself: I kept sometime, betwixt terror and modesty, even from looking through the window, which being an old fashion'd casement, without any light behind me, could hardly betray any one's being there to him from within: then the door was so secure, that without violence, or my own consent, there was no opening it, from without.

But now, by my own experience, I found it too true, that objects which afright us, when we cannot get from them, draw our eyes as forcibly as those that please us. I could not long withstand that nameless impulse, which, without any desire of this novel sight, compell'd me towards it: embolden'd too by my certainty of being at once unseen and safe, I ventur'd by degrees to cast my eyes on an object so terrible and alarming to my virgin modesty as a naked man: But as

I snatch'd