ith a deadly sin, who had killed it finally while,
like a serpent of evil, it clung to his throat, drinking his life's
blood, James knew what love was--a fire in the veins, a divine
affliction, a passion, a frenzy, a madness. The love he knew was the
love of the body of flesh and blood, the love that engenders, the love
that kills. At the bottom of it is sex, and sex is not ugly or immoral,
for sex is the root of life. The woman is fair because man shall love
her body; her lips are red and passionate that he may kiss them; her
hair is beautiful that he may take it in his hands--a river of living
gold.

James stopped, and the dead love rose again and tore his entrails like a
beast of prey. He gasped with agony, with bitter joy. Ah, that was the
true love! What did he care that the woman lacked this and that? He
loved her because he loved her; he loved her for her faults. And in
spite of the poignant anguish, he thanked her from the bottom of his
heart, for she had taught him love. She had caused him endless pain, but
she had given him the strength to bear it. She had ruined his life,
perhaps, but had shown him that life was worth living. What were the
agony, the torture, the despair, beside that radiant passion which made
him godlike? It is only the lover who lives, and of his life every
moment is intense and fervid. James felt that his most precious
recollection was that ardent month, during which, at last, he had seen
the world in all its dazzling movement, in its manifold colour, singing
with his youth and laughing to his joy.

And he did not care that hideous names have been given to that dear
passion, to that rich desire. The vulgar call it lust, and blush and
hide their faces; in their folly is the shame, in their prurience the
disgrace. They do not know that the appetite which shocks them is the
very origin of the highest qualities of man. It is they, weaklings
afraid to look life in the face, dotards and sentimentalists, who have
made the body unclean. They have covered the nakedness of Aphrodite with
the rags of their own impurity. They have disembowelled the great lovers
of antiquity till Cleopatra serves to adorn a prudish tale and Lancelot
to point a moral. Oh, Mother Nature, give us back our freedom, with its
strength of sinew and its humour! For lack of it we perish in false
shame, and our fig-leaves point our immodesty to all the world. Teach us
that love is not a tawdry sentiment, but a fire divine in or