Page:Imre.pdf/110

108 showing how my whole young nature, soul and body together, Imre—could be stirred with a veritable adoration for some boy-friend that I elected an adoration with a physical yearning in it—how intense was the appeal of bodily beauty, in a lad, or in a man of mature years."

"And yet, with that beauty, I looked for manliness, poise, will-power, dignity and strength in him. For, somehow I demanded those traits, always and clearly, whatever else I sought along with them. I say 'sought' I can say, too, won—won often to nearness. But this other, more romantic, emotion in me so strongly physical, sexual, as well as spiritual it met with a really like and equal and full response once only. Just as my school-life was closing, with my sixteenth year (nearly my seventeenth) came a friendship with a newcomer into my classes, a lad of a year older than myself, of striking beauty of physique, and uncommon strength of character. This early relation embodied the same precocious, absolutely vehement passion (I can call it noth-