never experienced any leanings that way. I was as much a man as
others, more so than many are, perhaps, and I liked women, but at the
same time they repelled me.

My old fastidiousness came in; to my taste there was always something
wrong about them. While they attracted one part of my nature they
revolted another part, and on the whole I preferred to do without their
intimate society, rather than work violence to this second and higher
part of me. Moreover, quite at the beginning of my career I had
concluded from observation that a man gets on better in life alone,
rather than with another to drag at his side, or by whom perhaps he must
be dragged. Still true marriage, such as most men and some women have
dreamed of in their youth, had always been one of my ideals; indeed it
was on and around this vision that I wrote that first book of mine which
was so successful. Since I knew this to be unattainable in our imperfect
conditions, however, notwithstanding Bastin's strictures, again I
dismissed the whole matter from my mind as a vain imagination.

As an alternative I reflected upon a parliamentary career which I was
not too old to begin, and even toyed with one or two opportunities that
offered themselves, as these do to men of wealth and advanced views.
They never came to anything, for in the end I decided that Party
politics were so hateful and so dishonest, that I could not bring myself
to put my neck beneath their yoke. I was sure that if I tried to do
so, I should fail more completely than I had done at the Bar and in
Literature. Here, too, I am quite certain that I was right.

The upshot of it all was that I sought refuge in that last expedient of
weary Englishmen, travel, not as a globe-trotter, but leisurely and with
an inquiring mind, learning much but again finding, like the ancient
writer whom I have quoted already, that there is no new thing under the
sun; that with certain variations it is the same thing over and over
again.

No, I will make an exception, the East did interest me enormously. There
it was, at Benares, that I came into touch with certain thinkers who
opened my eyes to a great deal. They released some hidden spring in
my nature which hitherto had always been striving to break through the
crust of our conventions and inherited ideas. I know now that what I
was seeking was nothing less than the Infinite; that I had "immortal
longings in me." I listened to all their solemn talk of epochs and y