Barbara Alton wearing a swimsuit off the shoulder

Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure)

Letter The Second

But now the true refining passion had regain'd thorough possession of me, with all its train of symptoms: a sweet sensibility, a tender timidity, love-sick yearnings temper'd with diffidence and modesty, all held me in a subjection of soul, incomparably dearer to me than the liberty of heart which I had been long, too long! the mistress of, in the course of those grosser gallantries, the consciousness of which now made me sigh with a virtuous confusion and regret. No real virgin, in view of the nuptial bed, could give more bashful blushes to unblemish'd innocence than I did to a sense of guilt; and indeed I lov'd Charles too truly not to feel severely that I did not deserve him.

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