ously.

I know not how to describe to you the lavish wealth of selfless devotion
she bathed me in during the brief torturing and unfulfilled period
before the end. It made me aware of new depths and heights in human
nature. It taught me a new beauty that even my finest dreams had left
unmentioned. Into the region that great souls inhabit a glimpse was
given me. My own dreadful weakness was laid bare. And an eternal hunger
woke in me--that I might love.

That hunger remained unsatisfied. I prayed, I yearned, I suffered; I
could have decreed myself a deservedly cruel death; it seemed I
stretched my little nature to unendurable limits in the fierce hope that
the Gift of the Gods might be bestowed upon me, and that her divine
emotion might waken a response within my leaden soul. But all in vain.
My attitude, in spite of every prayer, of every effort, remained no more
than a searching and unavailing pity, but a pity that held no seed of a
mere positive emotion, least of all, of love. The heart in me lay
unredeemed; it knew ashamed and very tender gratitude; but it did not
beat for her. I could not love.

I have told you bluntly, frankly, of my physical feelings towards Marion
and her beauty. It is a confession that I give into my own safe keeping.
I think, perhaps, that you, though cast in a finer mould, may not
despise them utterly, nor too contemptuously misinterpret them. The
legend that twins may share a single soul has always seemed to me
grotesque and unpoetic nonsense, a cruel and unnecessary notion too: a
man is sufficiently imperfect without suffering this further subtraction
from his potentialities. And yet it is true, in our own case, that you
have exclusive monopoly of the ethereal qualities, while to me are given
chiefly the physical attributes of the vigorous and healthy male--the
animal: my six feet three, my muscular system, my inartistic and
pedestrian temperament. Fairly clean-minded, I hope I may be, but beyond
all question I am the male animal incarnate. It was, indeed, the
thousand slaveries of the senses, individually so negligible,
collectively so overwhelming, that forced me upon my knees before her
physical loveliness. I must tell you now that this potent spell,
alternating between fiery desire and the sincerest of repugnance,
continued to operate. I complete the confession by adding briefly, that
after marriage she resented and repelled all my advances. A deep sadness
came upon her; she wept; and