o feminine loveliness. It is thou, O woman, that we
require.

Love comes not to permit too much of paradise. It requires the fevered
skin, the troubled life, the unbound hair, the kiss electrical and
irreparable, the clasp of desire. The sidereal is embarrassing, the
ethereal is heavy. Too much of the heavenly in love is like too much
fuel on a fire: the flame suffers from it. Gwynplaine fell into an
exquisite nightmare; Dea to be clasped in his arms--Dea clasped in them!
He heard nature in his heart crying out for a woman. Like a Pygmalion in
a dream modelling a Galathea out of the azure, in the depths of his soul
he worked at the chaste contour of Dea--a contour with too much of
heaven, too little of Eden. For Eden is Eve, and Eve was a female, a
carnal mother, a terrestrial nurse; the sacred womb of generations; the
breast of unfailing milk; the rocker of the cradle of the newborn world,
and wings are incompatible with the bosom of woman. Virginity is but the
hope of maternity. Still, in Gwynplaine's dreams, Dea, until now, had
been enthroned above flesh. Now, however, he made wild efforts in
thought to draw her downwards by that thread, sex, which ties every girl
to earth. Not one of those birds is free. Dea, like all the rest, was
within this law; and Gwynplaine, though he scarcely acknowledged it,
felt a vague desire that she should submit to it. This desire possessed
him in spite of himself, and with an ever-recurring relapse. He pictured
Dea as woman. He came to the point of regarding her under a hitherto
unheard-of form; as a creature no longer of ecstasy only, but of
voluptuousness; as Dea, with her head resting on the pillow. He was
ashamed of this visionary desecration. It was like an attempt at
profanation. He resisted its assault. He turned from it, but it returned
again. He felt as if he were committing a criminal assault. To him Dea
was encompassed by a cloud. Cleaving that cloud, he shuddered, as though
he were raising her chemise. It was in April. The spine has its dreams.
He rambled at random with the uncertain step caused by solitude. To have
no one by is a provocative to wander. Whither flew his thoughts? He
would not have dared to own it to himself. To heaven? No. To a bed. You
were looking down upon him, O ye stars.

Why talk of a man in love? Rather say a man possessed. To be possessed
by the devil, is the exception; to be possessed by a woman, the rule.
Every man has to bear this alienation of