And now let me go on to tell at once the thing that changed life for both of us altogether, that turned us out of the courses that seemed set for us, our , successful and divergent ways, she to the tragedy of her death and I from all the of the public career that lay before me to the work that now, toilsomely, and blunderingly enough, I do. It was to pierce and away the appearances of life for me, it was to open my way to infinite disillusionment, and unsuspected truths. Within a few weeks of our second meeting Mary and I were in love with one another; we had indeed become lovers. The arrested attractions of our former love released again, drew us to that. We tried to seem outwardly only friends, with this hot glow between us. Our secret was half discovered and half betrayed itself. There followed a tragi-comedy of and disunited struggle. Within four months the crisis of our two lives was past....  
It is not within my purpose to tell you, my son, of the particular events, the particular comings and goings, the chance words, the chance meetings, the fatal misunderstandings that occurred between us. I want to tell of something more general than that. This misadventure is in our strain. It is our inheritance. It is a possibility in the inheritance of all honest and emotional men and women. There are no doubt people altogether and to whom these passions and desires are at once controllable and indulgences without any radiation of consequences, a secret and detachable part of life, and there may be people of convictions so strong and simple that these are eliminated, but we Strattons are of a quality neither so low nor so high, we stoop and rise, we are not convinced about our standards, and for many generations to come, with us and with such people as the , and indeed with most of our sort of people, we shall be equally desirous of free and intimate friendship and to blaze into passion and disaster at that .
 
This is one of the essential in the adaptation of such human beings as ourselves to that greater state of which I dream. It is the of my story. It is one of the two essential riddles that confront our kind. The servitude of sex and the servitude of are the twin conditions upon which human society rests to-day, the two limitations upon its progress towards a greater social order, to that greater community, those uplands of light and happy freedom, towards which that Being who was my father yesterday, who thinks in myself to-day, and who will be you to-morrow and your sons after you, by his very nature urges and must continue to urge the life of mankind. The story of myself and Mary is a incident in that gigantic, scarce conscious effort to get clear of and confusions and , and have our way with life. We are like little figures, dots ascendant upon a vast hillside; I take up our for an instant and hold............