A motive is an intellectual aim.

That you were "very young" when our friendship began?
Your defect was not that you knew so little about life, but that you knew so much.

The morning dawn of boyhood with its delicate bloom, its clear pure light, its joy of innocence and expectation, you had left far behind you.

With very swift and running feet you had passed from Romance to Realism.

The gutter and the things that live in it had begun to fascinate you.