his love. The letter is like a passage from one of
Shakespeare's sonnets transposed to a minor key.

It was, let me say frankly, the sort of letter I would, in a happy, if
wilful moment, have written to any graceful young man of either
university who had sent me a poem of his own making, certain that he
would have sufficient wit, or culture, to interpret rightly its
fantastic phrases. Look at the history of that letter! It passes from
you into the hands of a loathsome companion[51], from him to a gang of
blackmailers, copies of it are sent about London to my friends, and to
the manager[52] of the theatre where my work is being performed, every
construction but the right one is put on it, society is thrilled with
the absurd rumours that I have had to pay a high sum of money for having
written an infamous letter to you; this forms the basis of your father's
worst attack.

I produce the original letter myself in court to show what it really is;
it is denounced by your father's counsel as a revolting and insidious
attempt to corrupt innocence; ultimately it forms part of a criminal
charge; the crown takes it up; the judge sums up on it with little
learning and much morality; I go to prison for it at last. That is the
result of writing you a charming letter.

It makes me feel sometimes as if you yourself had been merely a puppet
worked by some secret and unseen hand to bring terrible events to a
terrible issue. But puppets themselves have passions. They will bring a
new plot into what they are presenting, and twist the ordered issue of
vicissitude to suit some whim or appetite of their own. To be entirely
free, and at the same time entirely dominated by law, is the eternal
paradox of human life that we realise at every moment; and this, I often
think, is the only explanation possible of your nature, if indeed for
the profound and terrible mystery of a human soul there is any
explanation at all, except one that makes the mystery all the more
marvellous still.

I thought life was going to be a brilliant comedy, and that you were to
be one of the graceful figures in it. I found it to be a revolting and
repellent tragedy, and that the sinister occasion of the great
catastrophe, sinister in its concentration of aim and intensity of
narrowed will power, was yourself stripped of the mask of joy and
pleasure by which you, no less than I, had been deceived and led astray.

The memory of our friendship is the shadow that walks w