under the control of spiritual
loyalty. The power which gave me life seemed to insist on my
doing that for which the same power would sting me with remorse.
If there is no remedy I must either cry out against the injustice
of this life of torment between nature and conscience, or submit
to the blind trust of baffled ignorance. If there is a remedy
life will not seem to be such an intolerable ordeal. I am not
pleading that I must succumb to impulse. I do not doubt that a
pure celibate life is possible so far as action is concerned. But
I cannot discover that friendship with younger men can go on
uncolored by a sensuous admixture which fills me with shame and
loathing. The gratification of passion--normal or abnormal--is
repulsive to esthetic feeling. I am nearly 42 and I have always
diverted myself from personal interests that threatened to become
dangerous to me. More than a year ago, however, a new fate seemed
to open to my unhappy and lonely life. I became intimate with a
young man of 20, of the rarest beauty of form and character. I am
confident that he is and always has been pure. He lives an
exalted moral and religious life dominated by the idea that he
and all men are partners of the divine nature, and able in the
strength of that nature to be free from evil. I believe him to be
normal. He shows pleasure in the society of attractive young
women and in an innocent, light-hearted way refers to the time
when he may be able to marry. He is a general favorite, but
turned to me as to a friend and teacher. He is poor, and it was
possible for me to guarantee him a good education. I began to
help him from the longings of a lonely life. I wanted a son and
a friend in my inward desolation. I craved the companionship of
this pure and happy nature. I felt such a reverence for him that
I hoped to find the sensuous element in me purged away by his
purity. I am, indeed, utterly incapable of doing him harm; I am
not morally weak; nevertheless the sensuous element is there, and
it poisons my happiness. He is ardently affectionate and
demonstrative. He spends the summers with me in Europe, and the
tenderness he feels for me has prompted him at times to embrace
and kiss me as he always has done to his father. Of late I have
begun to fear that without will or desire I may injure the
sprin