About a year after menstruation was established she accidentally discovered the act of masturbation by leaning over a table. "I discovered it naturally; no one taught me; and the very naturalness of the impulse that led me to it often made me in later years question the harmfulness." Both her sisters masturbated from a very early age, but not, to her knowledge, her brother. The practice of masturbation was continued. "For many years, imbued with the old ideas of morality, I struggled against it in vain. The sight of animals copulating, the perusal of various books (Shakespeare, Rabelais, Gautier's _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, etc.), the sight of the nude in some Bacchanalian pictures (such as Rubens's), all aroused passion. Coexistent with this--perhaps (though I doubt it) due to it--arose a disgust for normal intercourse. I fell in love and enjoyed kisses, etc., but the mere thought of anything beyond disgusted me. Had my lover suggested such a thing I would have lost all love for him. But all this time I went on masturbating, though as seldom as possible and without thought of my lover. Love was to me a thing ideal and quite apart from lust, and I still think that it is false to try to connect the two. I fear that even now, if I fell in love, sexual intercourse would break the charm. At the age of 18 I came across Tolstoy's _Kreutzer Sonata_ and was overjoyed to find all I had thought written down there. Gradually, through seeing a friend happily married, I have grown to a more normal view of things. I am very critical of men and have never met one liberal-minded and just enough to please me. Perhaps if I did I might take a perfectly healthy view of things." In course of time various devices had been adopted to heighten sexual excitement when indulging in masturbation. Thus, for instance, she found that the effects of sexual excitement are increased by keeping the bladder full. But the chief method which she had devised for heightening and prolonging the preliminary excitement consisted in wearing tight stays (as a rule, she wears loose stays) and in painting her face. She cannot herself explain this. Self-excitement is completed by friction, or sometimes by the introduction of a piece of wood into the vagina. She finds that, the more frequently she masturbates, the more easily she is excited. Spontaneous sexual feeling is strongest before and after the menstrual period; not so much so during the periods. There are various faint traces of homosexuality, it may be gathered, in the history of this subject's sexual development. Recently these have come to a climax in the formation of a homosexual relationship with a girl friend. This relationship has given her great pleasure and satisfaction. She does not, however, regard herself as being a really inverted person.