“You must not say that,” I replied; “you are going too far; the Venus of Milo is as fine as any Apollo, in sheer beauty; the flowing curves appeal to me more than your weedy lines.”

“Perhaps they do, Frank,” he retorted, “but you must see that the boy is far more beautiful.  It is your sex-instinct, your sinful sex-instinct which prevents you worshipping the higher form of beauty.  Height and length of limb give distinction; slightness gives grace; women are squat!  You must admit that the boy’s figure is more beautiful; the appeal it makes far higher, more spiritual.”

“Six of one and half-a-dozen of the other,” I barked.  “Your sculptor knows it is just as hard to find an ideal boy’s figure as an ideal girl’s; and if he has to modify the most perfect girl’s figure, he has to modify the most perfect boy’s figure as well.  If he refines the girl’s breasts and hips he has to pad the boy’s ribs and tone down the great staring knee-bones and the unlovely large ankles; but please go on, I enjoy your special pleading and your romantic passion interests me; though you have not yet come to the romance, let alone the passion.”

“Oh, Frank,” he cried, “the story is full of romance; every meeting was an event in my life.  You have no idea how intelligent he is; every evening we spent together he was different; he had grown, developed.  I lent him books and he read them, and his mind opened from week to week like a flower, till in a short time, a few months, he became an exquisite companion and disciple.  Frank, no girl grows like that; they have no minds, and what intelligence they have is all given to wretched vanities, and personal jealousies.  There is no intellectual companionship possible with them.  They want to talk of dress, and not of ideas, and how persons look and not of what they are.  How can you have the flower of romance without a brotherhood of soul?”

“Sisterhood of soul seems to me infinitely finer,” I said, “but go on.”

“I shall convince you,” he declared; “I must be able to, because all reason is on my side.  Let me give you one instance.  Of course my boy had his bicycle; he used to come to me on it and go to and fro from the barracks on it.  When you came to Paris in September, you invited me to dine one night, one Thursday night, when he was to come to me.  I told him I had to go and dine with you.  He didn’t mind; but was glad when I said I had an English editor for a friend, glad that I should have someone to talk to about London and the people I used to know.  If it had been a woman I loved, I should have been forced to tell lies:  she would have been jealous of my past.  I told him the truth, and when I spoke about you he grew interested and excited, and at last he put a wish before me.  He wanted to know if he might come and leave his bicycle outside and look through the window of the restaurant, just to see us at dinner.  I told him there might possibly be women-guests.  He replied that he would be delighted to see me in dress-clothes talking to gentlemen and ladies.