ught of exclusion
from the society of women by seeing around me so many who were
self-devoted to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me whether I
should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem of
existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me the vows which
settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between the
devotee and the object of his dangerous attraction.

How often I talked this whole matter over with the young priest who was
at once my special instructor and my favorite companion! But accustomed
as I had become to the forms of the Roman Church, and impressed as I was
with the purity and excellence of many of its young members with whom I
was acquainted, my early training rendered it impossible for me to accept
the credentials which it offered me as authoritative. My friend and
instructor had to set me down as a case of "invincible ignorance." This
was the loop-hole through which he crept out of the prison-house of his
creed, and was enabled to look upon me without the feeling of absolute
despair with which his sterner brethren would, I fear, have regarded me.

I have said that accident exposed me at times to the influence which I
had such reasons for dreading. Here is one example of such an
occurrence, which I relate as simply as possible, vividly as it is
impressed upon my memory. A young friend whose acquaintance I had made
in Rome asked me one day to come to his rooms and look at a cabinet of
gems and medals which he had collected. I had been but a short time in
his library when a vague sense of uneasiness came over me. My heart
became restless,--I could feel it stirring irregularly, as if it were
some frightened creature caged in my breast. There was nothing that I
could see to account for it. A door was partly open, but not so that I
could see into the next room. The feeling grew upon me of some influence
which was paralyzing my circulation. I begged my friend to open a
window. As he did so, the door swung in the draught, and I saw a
blooming young woman,--it was my friend's sister, who had been sitting
with a book in her hand, and who rose at the opening of the door.
Something had warned me of the presence of a woman, that occult and
potent aura of individuality, call it personal magnetism, spiritual
effluence, or reduce it to a simpler expression if you will; whatever it
was, it had warned me of the nearness of the dread attraction which
allured at a d