"My first emotions at the sight of this youth, naked in
the water, were, with all imaginable respect to truth, those
of surprise and fear; and, in course, I should immediately
have run out, had not my modesty, fatally for itself, inter-
posed the objection of the door and window being so situated
that it was scarce possible to get out, and make my way
along the bank to the house, without his seeing me: which I
could not bear the thought of, so much ashamed and con-
founded was I at having seen him. Condemn'd then to stay
till his departure should release me, I was greatly embar-
rassed how to dispose of myself: I kept some time betwixt
terror and modesty, even from looking through the window,
which being an old-fashinon'd casement, without any light
behind me, could hardly betray any one's being there to
him from within; then the door was so secure, that without
violence, or my own consent, there was no opening it from
without.
"But now, by my own experience, I found it too true
that objects which affright us, when we cannot get from
them, draw out eyes as forcibly as those that please us.
I could not long withstand that nameless impulse, which,
without any desire of this novel sight, compelled me to-
wards it; embolden'd too by my certainty of being at once
unseen and safe, I ventur'd by degrees to cast my eyes on an
object so terrible and alarming to my virgin modesty as a
naked man.
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