Ever since the day he had gone into the copse after Angelica, he’d felt threatened by sexual need, keener than any he’d ever known. Perhaps it was how Wilde had felt, before he gave way utterly. (Was he, perhaps, feeling like this when Henry had seen him, absorbed in his book?) It was how Carpenter and Addington had felt; how many of the inverts who’d submitted their histories had felt: desire burning you up, too hot to touch.
