Have lost their terrors now; we shall not die--
The universe itself shall be our Immortality!"

Have you forgotten how you chanted these, and told me they were Oscar
Wilde's. You had set my feet firmly on earth for the first time, there
was great darkness with me for many weeks, but, as it lifted, the earth
seemed greener than ever of old, the sunshine a goodlier thing, and
verily a blessedness indeed to draw the breath of life. I had learnt
"the value and significance of flesh"; I no longer scorned a carnal
diet, and once again I turned my eyes on the damsels in the street.

'But an influence soon came to me that kept me from going all the way
with you, and taught me to say, "I know not," where you would say, "It
is not." Blessings on thee who didst throw a rainbow, that may mean a
promise, across the void, that awoke the old instinct of faith within
me, and has left me "an Agnostic with a faith," quite content with "the
brown earth," if that be all, but with the added significance a mystery
gives to living;--thou who first didst teach me Love's lore aright, to
thee do I owe this thing.

'To J.A.W. I owe the first great knowledge of that other love between
man and man, which Whitman has since taught us to call "the dear love of
comrades"; and to him I owe that I never burned those early rhymes, or
broke my little reed--an unequivocal service to me, whatever the
public, should it be consulted, may think.

'To a dear sister I owe that still more exquisite and subtle comradeship
which can only exist between man and woman, but from which the more
disturbing elements of sex must be absent. And here, let me also thank
God that I was brought up in quite a garden of good sisters.