The young men strained upon the crank To wring the last reluctant inch. They laughed together, fair and frank, And threw their loins across the winch. - Vita Sackville-West

Virginia wasn’t all cool intellect by any means. She had the warmest and deepest and most human of affections for those she loved. They were few, perhaps, and she applied alarmingly high standards, but her love and humanity were real, once they were given.

I look on my friendship with her as a treasure and a privilege. I shan't ever fall in love with her, padlock, but I am absolutely devoted to her and if she died I should mind quite, quite dreadfully. Or went mad again.

Chances of meeting this person, doing that thing, accumulate. Life is as I’ve said since I was ten, awfully interesting – if anything, quicker, keener at forty-four than twenty-four – more desperate I suppose, as the river shoots to Niagara – my new vision of death. ‘The one experience I shall never describe’ I said to Vita yesterday.