sex. That any woman lived who could see with my eyes, or share my
contempt of the trammels set round life, I did not believe until I
met with Jenny Redmayne. Women had never interested me, save in the
case of my mother, and I had seen none other with her large heart,
tolerance, humour and indifference to convention.

Then a chance friend, the brainless Robert Redmayne, brought his
niece to spend her school holiday with him and I discovered in the
seventeen-year-old schoolgirl a magnificent and pagan simplicity of
mind, combined with a Greek loveliness of body that created in me a
convulsion. From the day that we met, from the hour that I heard her
laugh at her uncle's objection to mixed bathing, I was as one
possessed; and my triumphant joy may be judged, though never
measured, when I perceived that Jenny recognized in me the
complement and precious addition unconsciously sought of her own
spirit.

That spirit she had scarcely understood; but now its clean and
fierce white light shone in secret for me alone. We loved one
another devotedly from the first understanding; and each fresh find
in the heart of the other drew us together with increasing worship
and passion. We were probably the most exquisite man and woman, the
most original, beautiful, fearless and distinguished, that had ever
come together in the benighted township of Penzance. People stared
at us sometimes as though we were a faun and nymph; but they did
not guess that our hearts were formed to match our wondrous bodies.
Fire leaped to fire and before the girl finished her education we
were dedicated to each other forever.

What she saw in me was my extraordinary masculine beauty, combined