Rather against my expectation Holmes appeared for supper, wan and heavy-lidded and dishevelled. Beyond a subdued greeting he said nothing, but sat and gazed at me thoughtfully as I ate.

After a few minutes I began to feel the same discomfort one feels when under scrutiny by a hungry dog, or a waif who gazes wistfully through the window of a restaurant, and I put down my cutlery to sit back and stare at him in turn. "You cannot relieve anxiety by exhaustion and starvation," I told him. "You ought to try to eat something."

"Yes," he agreed, and rose to stand by the mantelpiece.

I carried on for a few more bites and then gave it up. I had no appetite either.

Holmes stood, his old briar pipe tucked into the corner of his mouth, staring into the fire with contracted brows.

"There's more, is there?" I asked, testily.

"I'm afraid so."

"Well, out with it." I picked up my own pipe and retreated to my customary chair.

"It's as much as a man's life is worth, Watson," he began. "They haven't hanged any of us since '36, but it was on the books as a capital offense until '61--well within our lifetime. And I imagine there's a fellow or two in the Old Bailey who might prefer it if they had left it so. The Continent has shown far greater reason: England has much to answer for, and has lost some of her brightest sons to the more tolerant southern climes."

His use of the inclusive pronoun startled me. Us? But then, if he were not my friend, what factor existed to separate him from other Sodomites save his confessed celibacy, which was surely not unique? The thought was painful to me. It is still difficult to write that word.

Holmes's voice began to take on a note of emotion. "Sixty men hanged in the first three decades of our century, and another score slaughtered under naval regulations. Poor wretches, Watson, deprived of life for what is, in any sane analysis, a matter of taste! I suppose those who were merely pilloried might have counted themselves lucky, although I am not so sure. The gallows is merely a swifter means to the same end... And to think--there, but for the grace of God..."

He broke off and stood for a moment with head bowed, before looking up suddenly into my horrified face. "I see you have some sympathy," said he, in a low tone. "Forgive me, my friend, if I unburden myself upon you--I have had precious little opportunity of doing so in the past, and to feel the ghost of a rope round your neck all your life for what is essentially none of your own doing is a heavy weight, at times."

"My dear Holmes--" I faltered. "I don't know what to say."

"Of course," he continued, once again rather sardonically, "I need no longer actually fear for my neck, though the prospect of life in prison--a real threat, though a remote one--or of an otherwise ruined existence, which is a far more present danger--has not tempted me to excess. You appreciate that I am in a position more peculiarly vulnerable to blackmail than most men, particularly given my trade, and will understand that I have cultivated a defense against any animal desire. I have done my best. I know you have thought me cold-hearted at times, Watson, and proof against amorous attraction, but I assure you this is not entirely true--to the extent that I have been in greater or lesser agonies since the moment I met you."

"Holmes!" I cried in consternation.

"Oh yes. Does it surprise you?"

"Well, earlier you hinted--but really--"

He had spoken seriously, so I was surprised when he shot me a brief, amused glance. "I commend your concentration, if it is really nothing more than your chin which you see in the glass while shaving," said he, "although the chin is itself rather a fine one. But I could have held out, Watson, if that had been where the attraction ended. Unfortunately for my peace of mind, your character lives up to your superb frame in almost every particular, and he would be disciplined indeed who could withstand the proximity of such temptation. I'm afraid it is beyond my capacity."

I sat aghast, with my mouth hanging open, and no possible reply occurred to me.

Holmes glanced at me again and laughed involuntarily at my expression; it was merely a sort of nervous eruption. "I'm sorry, dear fellow," he said unsteadily, "this must be appalling to you--wait, it's Mrs. Hudson."

He held up his hand to signal a halt in the conversation, then opened the door at the landlady's knock. I sat in embarrassed silence as she gathered the plates and shook her head over the thoughtlessness of gentlemen-lodgers who let good food go to waste. It was not until the clatter of china had faded away downstairs that he resumed speaking.

"I'm not joking. It is immeasurably painful for me to tell you this, and yet I must--I cannot go on in this way. It is seriously interfering with my work, if not my sanity. I shall have to find other lodging. That is what more I had to tell you, Watson. I am sorry."

I looked away from him and glanced around the crowded room. Most of the clutter was his.

"Yes," he agreed to my unspoken thought. "Neither simple nor convenient, especially since it is the last thing on earth I genuinely desire to do. I was an unutterable fool to have tried the experiment, and I richly deserve all the nuisance I have brought upon myself. But things have come to an extremity, and I think I shall have to go at once."

"At once?"

"Yes, Watson. Tonight."

"But where will you go?"

"Probably a hotel. I have made arrangements to stay with my brother this evening."

"With Mycroft? Then he knows?"

"Of course he does. Or at least, if he hasn't known for many years, I assume he has known since receiving the letter I sent him this morning. It requires no very abstruse deduction. --Don't ask me, Watson," he forestalled my next question wearily. "I have no idea about him."

"But what shall I do?"

"Anything you like, of course. Naturally I would continue the payments here until you found a new fellow-lodger, if you choose." He knocked his pipe out into the fireplace and replaced it in its rack.

I rose to my feet. "But--see here, Holmes, this is a bit sudden. We ought at least to discuss it. It would be far simpler for me to go, if one of us must--"

"That is extremely kind of you, but surely it would be unfair. No, dear fellow--I am not happy with the arrangement myself, but I assure you that I see no other choice." He took several steps in the direction of his bedroom, but I sprang to intercept him, and grasped his arm.

I had opened my mouth to make some remonstrance, but, as Holmes turned and looked at me without surprise, I found the words had deserted me. There was something in his fixed, intense gaze I had never seen there before, and it shook me.

It was not, exactly, tenderness--there was nothing soft about those keen grey eyes, or the hard line of the mouth; nor could it be called despair, yet there was something of both in the way he looked at me--sad and yearning, and poignant as a dagger. I felt he had always looked at me that way, while at the same time I knew that what I saw in his face had always been hidden from me.

"There is only one thing I have ever wanted more," he said mildly, in an intimate voice softer than a whisper, "and that is never to be incapacitated by this sort of sentiment again. It has lost me a very fine friend." With that he stretched a hand toward my face, and his fingertips lit, light as an insect's feet, along my cheek.

It was a galvanic moment. I have often found that at times of sudden crisis, for instance, between the time an unexpected shot has been fired and when it is known if anyone has been hit, one's awareness may reach so fine a pitch that time seems to slow to a crawl. It was so now.

Startled, I reached up to arrest his hand and seized his wrist, and he froze so completely, head a little back, eyes closed, with indrawn breath, that time might have stalled altogether, save for the pulse that beat like a piston beneath my gripping fingers.

He began slowly to turn away, like a man falling, and his expression and attitude were so eloquent of thwarted desire and self-loathing that I was moved, by a hitherto unsuspected will, to press my lips against the hand I held.

I am still not sure what moved me, unless it was compassion, or the strange, exciting sense of my power over him--or, as seems likely enough, a proclivity toward the act that somehow had remained dormant in my heart until precipitated into full actuality. . .I do not know. I was as startled as he, but full of a sudden, strengthening heat.

He made an almost inaudible sound, more of pain than of surprise. Still caught in the spell I turned his captive hand over to kiss its palm in the next instant, and he cried, "No!" sharply, in his accustomed tone of command, and his arm went taut in my grasp.

But he did not apply much effort to pulling away from me; instead he turned toward me, and the long fingers softened against my cheek. "No," he said again, this time with note of warning rather than authority. I looked up into his face with a strange exultation, and for a moment our eyes locked.

"John Watson," he breathed, caught between alarm and astonishment. "I hope to God you know what you're doing."

My hand slid over his as it rested open-fingered and quivering against my cheek. "I have no idea," I murmured.

His face was tense, the set of his mouth almost grim. Beads of perspiration had started out on his lip. His eyes never left my face, but flickered over my features to glean and judge my reactions. He might have been waiting for me to attack, I thought, somewhat confusedly, at the time. Tentatively he laid his hands upon my shoulders; I released the one I held so he could do so. I could feel their heat through my clothing, the fluttering of his fingers. He hesitated then a last moment, while I waited, my mind empty and yet whirling, my senses alert and aroused, and then, with a gasp of relief that was almost a sob, he crushed me against him with the surprising strength of his slender arms.

"Watson," he murmured, choked with emotion, and then, a mere breath: "John. John."

I was indescribably moved. I registered the passion of the moment, the rich sensations of a new experience, far more than I did the implications of what was taking place. My arms were round him before I knew what I intended, my embrace awkward, perhaps, but instinctive.

His heart hammered at my breast as if it would burst, his ribs heaved beneath my hands; his whole body, it seemed, thrummed with an intense energy which flowed into my own being. I had never seen him so animated, and I had never even dreamed of the power which I had, so unknowingly, held over this man who was, after all, more my idol than my friend.

Shall I ever forget his tremulous breath in my ear, or the smoothness of his flesh when, diffidently, I curled my hand round the back of his long neck and let my fingers dance lightly across the vertebra, the sinews distended and vibrating with tension... Holmes had beautiful skin, unblemished and fine pored, very white though speckled here and there with moles. With pain I realize I can still remember the pattern of those moles.

He pulled back from the embrace as abruptly as he had pulled me into it and held me at arms length, powerful fingers digging into me almost painfully as they gripped my arms. A spot of high colour burned on each cheek, and an unaccustomed glow lit his eyes as he regarded me in great excitement. He was transfigured: for the first time--though far from the last--I suddenly became aware of the subtle beauty of that long, narrow face, more in the animation and intensity of the expression, in the fevered brilliance of the eyes, than in the features.

"Can it be?" he demanded with a fierce reverence. "Ah, Watson--John--my friend: I knew from the moment I met you that I--but I did not dream that--" He gave up the attempt to speak with a click of his teeth as he snipped off the incoherent flow of words, and the muscles of his jaw worked for a moment. The grave expression returned, and, with those burning grey eyes locked to mine, he leaned toward me.

I wanted to say just now that I felt I was hypnotised, as a bird is hypnotised by a serpent, but I must not lie or embellish to the point of lying in a chronicle which I write only for myself, destined to be reduced to ash as others have been before it: unread, likely as not, even by its author. I knew full well that he meant to kiss me--I had enticed him to do so. I stood stock still, passive and devoid of thought or anxiety, acquiescent indeed, as his hands stole again to my cheeks, the touch light and heated; I recall as if it were yesterday that quiet amazement as his lips touched mine, and mine opened, reflexively, to deepen the communion. I was astounded at the ease, the comfort of the moment. Whatever condemnation may be levelled at such acts, no matter what dire prognostications against decency and sanity, nothing has ever felt so simple or so natural as my first taste of that particular sin. I would not take it back even if I could.

Was it I who first fumbled at his collar, or he who first pushed my coat down from my shoulders? That I cannot recall. That we were equal partners in that irretrievable act, as in so many other things, I do not doubt, though I am ashamed to say I often accused him in my mind for the inception of a series of carnal acts, as abhorrent to my intellect as they are dear to my heart.

What I remember next was Holmes again pulling away, shaken and panting, but with as bright a look as I have ever seen in that eager, narrow face. His collar and shirt were undone; I knew I had opened them. "Come to the bedroom, Watson," he breathed, urgently. "Will you come?"

Simply as that, I followed.