"While you were in Italy, I sent you a letter in which I represented myself as one clamouring up out of the depths of his being to you who might understand. Now I sincerely and deeply regret having made this attempt with you. In the same letter I predicted that your return might find me back in the depths of my being, where I belong. I regret I did not stay there when you came along. This feeling is due to no fault of yours or mine; but points to the fact that I must become still more exclusive and circumspect." Of Marie he wrote: "This attachment between two human beings is in all circumstances very terrible. The bond between Marie and myself was as strong as death, and partly so because of our great and essential differences. The first night we spent together struck one of the deep things in our discord. I was too nervous and sensitive to touch her that night, and in the morning she bitterly reproached me. The first book that really aroused her to the meaning of life was '_Mademoiselle de Maupin_.' Deeper than this difference was her galling interference in my affairs which never prompted me to meddle in hers. And her failure to appreciate or reciprocate my respect for the integrity of her personality is the hardest blow she can ever give to me. I have the same fatal charge to make against almost all men; the exceptions are so few and doubtful that I doubt whether I can ever gain from another that intense receptive attitude which I am willing to bestow. Fortunately for me, this illusion that there are such intense perceivers re-creates itself out of the veriest dust and dross of humanity. Like Shelley's 'Cloud,' my illusion may change, but it cannot die. Now I am in a state of mind when I am willing to let everything go by default--everything except my last illusion, that I can never let myself out to anyone. To Marie--and to you--and one or two others--I have been sorely tempted to lay myself out--but not even the moon can seduce me to reveal myself. My dead and buried self is my first and last seduction. This is crazy, of course, but I am heartily sick of all the 'sense' I know or can know. I believe, however, that I have lived so close to the 'truth' that its shadow has been cast over all my life. If, in the last analysis, all is illusion, I shall stick to the most powerful one--myself. My feeling for Marie arises largely from the fact that she is an expression of the irreparable part of my life--of its deepest essence.