he asked to do an errand; they are delighted if some man deigns to ask them a favor. The second girl interested in me was a "comrade," a student in a teacher's training college. My activities in the movement obliged me, distasteful as it was, to see her every day. Even after the arrangements for the day's job had been completed, she doggedly tagged along after me. She bought me presents, seemingly at random, and offered them with the words, "I wish you would think of me as your real sister." Wincing at the affectation I would answer, "I do," and force a sad little smile. I was afraid of angering her, and my only thought was to temporize somehow and put her off. As a result, I spent more and more time dancing attendance on that ugly, disagreeable girl. I let her buy me presents (they were without exception in extraordinarily bad taste and I usually disposed of them immediately to the postman or the grocery boy). I tried to look happy when I was with her, and made her laugh with my jokes. One summer evening she simply wouldn't leave me. In the hope of persuading her to go I kissed her when we came to a dark place along the street. She became uncontrollably, shamefully excited. She hailed a taxi and took me to the little room the movement secretly rented in an office building. There we spent the whole night in a wild tumult. "What an extraordinary sister I have," I told myself with a wry smile. The circumstances were such that I had no way of avoiding the landlord's daughter or this "comrade." Every day we bumped into one another; I could not dodge them as I had various other women in the past. Before I knew what was happening, my chronic lack of assurance
