Upon his return, he decided enough was enough. He composed a letter to Gay confirming “that I was still in love with her and saying that the only solution from my point of view was to cut the Gordian Knot and see her no more. I should leave no serious gap in her life, though I believed she was fond of me, but I could not hang around her as a rejected suitor, haunted by memories of what had been and dreams of what might have been.”
