y school days. I do not remember a moment, from the
time I first saw him to the time I left school, that I was not in
love with him, and the affection was reciprocated, if somewhat
reservedly. He was always a little ahead of me in books and
scholarship, but as our affection ripened we spent most of our
spare time together, and he received my advances much as a girl
who is being wooed, a little mockingly, perhaps, but with real
pleasure. He allowed me to fondle and caress him, but our
intimacy never went further than a kiss, and about that even was
the slur of shame; there was always a barrier between us, and we
never so much as whispered to one another concerning those things
of which all the school obscenely talked. Any connection between
our own emotions and the sexual morals of the school never
occurred to us. In fact, we lived a dream-life of chastity that
could not relate itself to any human conditions. This was
suddenly broken in upon. My friend was very beautiful and an
object of attraction to others. That some of the elder boys had
made offers of sexual intercourse to him I knew, but to him, as
to me, that was unspeakable wickedness. One day I heard that four
or five of these suitors of his had mishandled him; they had, I
believe, taken off his trousers and attempted to masturbate him.
The offense was probably horse play of an animal nature; to me it
seemed an unpardonable offense. The matter had been reported to
the master by a servant, but confirmatory evidence was needed
before punishment could follow. I was torn asunder by passions I
could not then analyze and in the end committed the greatest of
schoolboy crimes,--I sneaked. The action under the circumstances
was courageous, but I was indifferent so long as the boy I loved
judged me rightly. The result was that at the close of the term
four or five of the senior boys were 'asked to leave.' The
remaining brief period of my school life, which had previously
been a living hell, became really happy. That this should have
been brought about to the harm of four or five boys whose sin,
after all, was but a misdirected impulse for which the system was
responsible, seems to me now all very wrong. Of the boys sent
away, however, certainly three have made honorable careers. For
my friend and I, we became more afraid of each oth