Deliberate derision murders, not only affection, but admiration.
A blush needs no apologies. (Why? Because
Always a blush is spontaneous, uncontrollable; and
If there is any one thing a man likes to see, it is a spontaneous, an uncontrollable action in woman.)
When the man has declared himself hers and hers alone; has given proof of the truth of such declaration; has bound the woman to himself by terms dictated by herself then, but not till then, the woman acts spontaneously and without control; then she blushes. But
Seek not, impulsive masculine lover, to explore too many of the mysteries of this thy feminine helpmeet. Perchance she feels herself so much above thee that she blushes to give the herself. Perchance she regards thee so much a symbol of the G.o.d-like, that she blushes for because she is not more worthy. But far more probably she blushes for because she betrays to thee a mortal, a divine and cosmic secret. For
There is a divine and cosmic secret hidden beneath every blush.
Ah! man, man, peccant, impulsive, pa.s.sionate man, little knowest thou of the divine and cosmic secret that underlies Love.
To thee, O man, it may be, "t is a momentary flash that irradiates the world, and reveals for a moment a sky above that world;
To thee, O woman, "t is the reverberating thunder that, echoing, rolls for ever after unceasing in thy ears. Is this why,
Between a man and a woman, a single look will sometimes change the complexion of an intimacy of a life-time? And
Not until that look comes--not until eyes look into eyes with a penetration supernatural--is acquaintanceship metamorphosed into love.
It is a favorite fiction amongst women that a rejected suitor either will not marry or marries the first girl he meets. Because,
To marry another woman after having offered inalienable and unalterable fidelity to one, would otherwise be a blow to "amour propere". And yet, strangely enough, or perhaps not so strangely,
This is a fiction but rarely maintained with regard to her own cardiac transportations. And for this reason:--
Woman is, and knows herself to be, a multiple personality;
Man, a tyro in emotions, is cast in a simpler mould. So,
A woman may donate herself piecemeal, or over and over again, yet deem herself perfectly loyal.--And perhaps naturally and legitimately; for,
That man who will comprehend and appreciate all the intricacies of feminine emotion ... ... . but there is no such being existent.
Indeed even
Self-revelation is a task no daughter of Eve has achieved.
To sum up: between men and women
The consummation of love is a bodily oblation, the outcome of spiritual obsession.--Must I explain this? No, I shall not. Suffice it to say that
The Heavenly Aphrodite is true friend to the Earthly.(4) So
Nothing offends love; since love finds in all that savors of the mortal only a symbol and epitome of the supernatural. And
There is in Love a cosmic force and secret incomprehensible, incommunicable by man.
Is not, after all, Love the one supreme and significant fact of the cosmos: indelible, indecipherable: efflorescing in Man; emerging from the material; idealizing the carnal; pointing to an inscrutable, a spiritual goal? Can it be that
If we could explain Love, we should explain the cosmos? What if we could explain why it is that no one single isolated portion of the cosmos can live alone--and vaunt itself in itself sufficient--(5), but must seek some other single and isolated portion of the cosmos in order that that very cosmos shall continue, shall evolve, shall go towards its goal ...
Do we put our finger here upon some curious and recondite cosmic fact utterly transcending our mean comprehension?
(4) Cf. Plato, Symposium, 180 et seq.
(5) S.T. Coleridge, "Lectures on Shakespeare".
X. On Jealousy
"... la jalousie ... monster odieux."
--Moliere
"Ware jealousy as you would "ware wire: for it no psychiater has yet discovered a balm.
To make an experiment of jealousy is to make a very hazardous experiment indeed.
Jealousy is no proof of love, for
Often jealousy is but rancor under a sense of humiliation. Indeed,
Jealousy is a sign of weakness:
The lover whose self-confidence a.s.sures him of his pre-eminence fears no rival. Yet
Male self-confidence is peculiarly vulnerable where women be concerned, since,
As no man knows what it is appeals to a woman, he does not know on what to pride himself: