The Well of Loneliness

That night the weight against Stephen's heart, with its icy coldness, melted; and it flowed out in such a torrent of grief that she could not stand up against that torrent, so that drowning though she was she found pen and paper, and she wrote to Angela Crossby.

What a letter! All the pent-up passion of months, all the terrible, rending, destructive frustrations must burst from her heart: "Love me, only love me the way I love you. Angela, for God's sake, try to love me a little -- don't throw me away, because if you do I'm utterly finished. You know how I love you, with my soul and my body; if it's wrong, grotesque, unholy -- have pity. I'll be humble. Oh, my darling, I am humble now; I'm just a poor, heartbroken freak of a creature who loves you and needs you much more than its life, because life's worse than death, ten times worse without you. I'm some awful mistake -- God's mistake -- I don't know if there are any more like me, I pray not for their sakes, because it's pure hell. But oh, my dear, whatever I am, I just love you and love you. I thought it was dead, but it wasn't. It's alive -- so terribly alive tonight in my bedroom. " And so it went on for page after page.