The full hideousness of my
bargain for her dropped its veil and stood naked before me.
At last, disgusted and exhausted, I flung myself down again, and dumbly and
helplessly inspected the ruins of my projects--or, rather, the ruin of the
one project upon which I had my heart set. I had known I cared for her, but
it had seemed to me she was simply one more, the latest, of the objects on
which I was in the habit of fixing my will from time to time to make the
game more deeply interesting. I now saw that never before had I really been
in earnest about anything, that on winning her I had staked myself, and
that myself was a wholly different person from what I had been imagining.
In a word, I sat face to face with that unfathomable mystery of
sex-affinity that every man laughs at and mocks another man for believing
in, until he has himself felt it drawing him against will, against reason,
and sense, and interest, over the brink of destruction yawning before his
eyes--drawing him as the magnet-mountain drew Sindbad and his ship. And I
say to you that those who can defy and resist that compulsion are not more,
but less, than man or woman; and their fancied strength is in reality a
deficiency.
Pages:
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174