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I am five-and-thirty , and I have knocked about in the world and tasted the quality of life . I had a hard fight to begin with to win my way into the Upper Division -- I was third on a list of forty-seven -- and since then I have found myself promoted almost yearly in a widening sphere of social service . Before I met you I never met any one whom I felt I could love , but you have discovered depths in my own nature I had scarcely suspected . Except for a few early ebullitions of passion , natural to a warm and romantic disposition , and leaving no harmful after-effects -- ebullitions that by the standards of the higher truth I feel no one can justly cast a stone at , and of which I for one am by no means ashamed -- I come to you a pure and unencumbered man . I love you . In addition to my public salary I have a certain private property and further expectations through my aunt , so that I can offer you a life of wide and generous refinement , travel , books , discussion , and easy relations with a circle of clever and brilliant and thoughtful people with whom my literary work has brought me into contact , and of which , seeing me only as you have done alone in Morningside Park , you can have no idea . I have a certain standing not only as a singer but as a critic , and I belong to one of the most brilliant causerie dinner clubs of the day , in which successful Bohemianism , politicians , men of affairs , artists , sculptors , and cultivated noblemen generally , mingle together in the easiest and most delightful intercourse .