"How Love Came to Professor Guildea" by Robert Smythe Hichens

An interesting story, comparable to "La Horla" by Guy de Maupassant about an invisible and one-way untouchable ghostly haunting that seems not to go away until the object of its affection is dead.  Professor Guildea is a successful academic who cares only about his research and not a bit about human affection or companionship (he could have done well in 2019) however he strikes a friendship with a priest, Father Murchinson, who becomes his main confidant when mysterious things happen.
Guildea sees a human-looking shadow sitting on a park bench in front of his house (one of the doors to Hyde Park is just in front) and upon checking and finding nothing feels that an invisible presence which seems to be in love with him has moved to his house and has been petting and training his parrot.  After discussing and showing signs to Father Murchinson, Guildea goes to Paris to escape but there he is touched by the shadow, erotically, in the midst of his speech and he collapses.  Upon return he tells Murchinson that the shadow now follows him everywhere and snuggles against him in the bed and on the stairs.  Father Murchinson tells Guildea to give love back to the shadow, but he refuses and one night, while Murchinson also sees a shadow on the same bench, Guildea is dead of a heart attack with a horror expression on his face back in the house.

Although this is a horror story, just barely out of the Victorian age, and a pretty good one at that, I propose another explanation.  Hichens was gay in real life and it must not have been easy for him at the time.  He did live a long life (died at 86), but he probably felt many small deaths (not orgasms) during his life as a gay man in Victorian England.  Guildea is gay and Murchinson is his love object, but he cannot admit that to himself since gay is bad at the time.  So he concocts this shadow which replaces the sexual intimacy that he wants to have with Murchinson.  However, the stronger the gay love becomes, the more Guildea denies it and pushes it away, leading eventually to his death (symbolically?) because he denies the strongest aspect of his personality.  If this is the case, then Hichens should be getting way more credit for this story than he currently is.