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 with an intellect that set good and evil in their places and soared, by native instinct, above both. What I discovered in her was an attitude of mind so inquiring and so lawless, so utterly devoid of any familiar prejudice or mother-taught opinion, that I felt as the finder of a priceless jewel unstained by earth or heaven. Her intellect was pure and not vitiated by any superstition; she revealed a healthy thirst for experience; she adored me and my attitude to life. We made fascinating voyages of discovery into each others' hearts; we experimented from time to time on ordinary people; and we quickly discovered that we both possessed rare histrionic ability. Indeed she had already entertained ambitions for the stage; but though her dead father would hardly have stood in her way, these ambitions were not encouraged by the three dolts, her uncles, who now supposed themselves to control her future. A glorious actress is lost to the world in my wife. She had no secrets from me and I soon learned of her expectations; but it was not the prospect of the Redmayne money that shortened her uncles' lives. Jenny and I were never man-eaters; and, while my youthful experience in murder attracted her and increased her admiration for my qualities, it was not at that time in our minds to anticipate events or quarrel with her relations.