n, a man who went out more and made conquests, it would not be so
bad."

He was irritated by the inconsequentiality of her plaints. Finally,
feeling completely safe, he came closer to her and said, "You spoke of
remorse, but whether we embark or whether we stand on the bank, isn't
our guilt exactly the same?"

"Yes, I know. My confessor talks to me like that--only more
severely--but I think you are both wrong."

He could not help laughing, and he said to himself, "Remorse is perhaps
the condiment which keeps passion from being too unappetizing to the
blase." Then aloud he jestingly, "Speaking of confessors, if I were a
casuist it seems to me I would try to invent new sins. I am not a
casuist, and yet, having looked about a bit, I believe I _have_ found a
new sin."

"You?" she said, laughing in turn. "Can I commit it?"

He scrutinized her features. She had the expression of a greedy child.

"You alone can answer that. Now I must admit that the sin is not
absolutely new, for it fits into the known category of lust. But it has
been neglected since pagan days, and was never well defined in any
case."

"Do not keep me in suspense. What is this sin?"

"It isn't easy to explain. Nevertheless I will try. Lust, I believe, can
be classified into: ordinary sin, sin against nature, bestiality, and
let us add _demoniality_ and sacrilege. Well, there is, in addition to
these, what I shall call Pygmalionism, which embraces at the same time
cerebral onanism and incest.

"Imagine an artist falling in love with his child, his creation: with an
Herodiade, a Judith, a Helen, a Jeanne d'Arc, whom he has either
described or painted, and evoking her, and finally possessing her in
dream.

"Well, this love is worse than normal incest. In the latter sin the
guilty one commits only a half-offence, because his daughter is not born
solely of his substance, but also of the flesh of another. Thus,
logically, in incest there is a quasi-natural side, almost licit,
because part of another person has entered into the engendering of the
_corpus delicti_; while in Pygmalionism the father violates the child of
his soul, of that which alone is purely and really his, which alone he
can impregnate without the aid of another. The offence is, then, entire
and complete. Now, is there not also disdain of nature, of the work of
God, since the subject of the sin is no longer--as even in bestiality--a
palpable and living creature, but an unreal being cre