The delay wounded Oscar, and all the while, as he told me a little later, he was resisting an influence which had dominated his life in the past.
"I got a letter almost every day, Frank, begging me to come to Posilippo, to the villa which Lord Alfred Douglas had rented.

Every day I heard his voice calling, 'Come, come, to sunshine and to me.

Come to Naples with its wonderful museum of bronzes and Pompeii and Paestum, the city of Poseidon: I am waiting to welcome you.

Come.' "Who could resist it, Frank?
love calling, calling with outstretched arms; who could stay in bleak Berneval and watch the sheets of rain falling, falling--and the grey mist shrouding the grey sea, and think of Naples and love and sunshine; who could resist it all?
I could not, Frank, I was so lonely and I hated solitude.

I resisted as long as I could, but when chill October came and Bosie came to Rouen for me, I gave up the struggle and yielded." Could Oscar Wilde have won and made for himself a new and greater life?
The majority of men are content to think that such a victory was impossible to him.