Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/154

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the broader the humour the more acceptable. She often goes to the Folies-Bergères, with a male friend, and even to the Moulin-Rouge now and then. In the latter place, she sat down one evening, near to a young, pretty prostitute of similisexual tastes. In the absence of the gentleman who accompanied her, she made enough of an acquaintance with this person to give her male escort the slip, and went for the night to the apartment of the woman; but only, as she insists, in a mad sort of freak, "just as a man would do". Of such women as a class, she has what is apparently a proper aversion. She is exceedingly fond of dress and jewellery, and I learn that she has a poor sense of the moral obligation of a debt. At least, she has not hesitated to open accounts with tradesmen, to order costly articles of dress, etc., that she could not pay for, and did not expect to pay for; in one or two cases suits having been brought. She confesses to being almost devoid of jealousy, in her relations with women; "if she is not loved in return or if her friends are untrue", she seeks others, and is "as well satisfied with one pleasant person as with another". She appears to lack any constancy in her emotional life, and professes that she has no sympathetic feeling toward her relatives, "though they are a very good sort of people". From certain incidents, not directly of her vita sexualis, I am inclined to think that R. E— has small respect for truth, when subterfuges, not to say falsehoods, are convenient. She told me, on her second consultation with me, an incident involving her deliberate theft of a private journal of a friend, to learn how the pecuniary affairs of the lady stood, and also to try to discover a detail in regard to a Bourse speculation. R. E— says that she is passionately fond of all games of chance, and has visited Ostend and the Riviera for the purpose of gambling there".

"R. E— is a fine-looking blonde, in type. She has no signs of masculine physique externally that the ordinary

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