"We were together only for a few days, when I was obliged to leave for my home, and the parting caused me great unhappiness and depression. A few months after we spent a vacation together. One day during our trip we went swimming, and undressed in the same bathhouse. When I saw my friend naked for the first time he seemed to me so beautiful that I longed to throw my arms about him and cover him with kisses. I kept my feelings hidden, however, hardly daring to look at him for fear of being unable to restrain my desires. Several times afterward, in his room, I saw him stripped, with the same effect upon my emotions. Until I had seen him naked my feelings for him were not of a physical character, but afterward I longed for actual contact, but only by embraces and kisses. Though he was fond of me, he had absolutely no amorous longings for me, and being a simple, pure-minded fellow, would have loathed me for mine and my inverted nature. I was careful never to let him discover it, and I was made very unhappy when he confided that he was in love with a young girl whom he wished to marry. This episode took place several years ago, and though we are still friends my emotional feelings for him have cooled considerably. "I have always been very shy of showing any affectionate tendencies. Most of my acquaintances (and close friends even) think me curiously cold, and often wonder why I have never fallen in love or married. For obvious reasons I have never been able to tell them. "Three or four years ago a little book by Coventry Patmore fell into my hands, and from its perusal resulted a strange blending of my religious and erotic notions. The desire to love and be loved is hard to drown, and, when I realized that homosexually it was neither lawful nor possible for me to love in this world, I began to project my longings into the next. By birth I am a Roman Catholic, and in spite of a somewhat skeptical temper, manage to remain one by conviction. "From the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Eucharist, I have drawn conclusions which would fill the minds of the average pietist with holy horror; nevertheless I believe that (granting the premises) these conclusions are both logically and theologically defensible. The Divinity of my fancied paradise resembles in no way the vapid conceptions of Fra Angelico, or the Quartier St. Sulpice. His physical aspect, at least, would be better represented by some Praxitilean demigod or Flandrin's naked, brooding boy. "While these imaginings have caused me considerable moral disquietude, they do not seem wholly reprehensible, because I feel that the chief happiness I would derive by their realization would be mainly from the contemplation of the loved one, rather than from closer joys.