Now, strange and awful though it be to hear, women
perceive this requirement of them in the spirit of the man; they
perceive, too, and it may be gratefully, that they address their
performances less to the taming of the green and prankish monsieur of
the forest than to the pacification of a voracious aesthetic gluttony,
craving them insatiably, through all the tenses, with shrieks of the
lamentable letter "I" for their purity. Whether they see that it has
its foundation in the sensual, and distinguish the ultra-refined but
lineally great-grandson of the Hoof in this vast and dainty exacting
appetite is uncertain. They probably do not; the more the damage; for
in the appeasement of the glutton they have to practise much
simulation; they are in their way losers like their ancient mothers. It
is the palpable and material of them still which they are tempted to
flourish, wherewith to invite and allay pursuit: a condition under
which the spiritual, wherein their hope lies, languishes. The
capaciously strong in soul among women will ultimately detect an
infinite grossness in the demand for purity infinite, spotless bloom.
Earlier or later they see they have been victims of the singular
Egoist, have worn a mask of ignorance to be named innocent, have turned
themselves into market produce for his delight, and have really
abandoned the commodity in ministering to the lust for it, suffered
themselves to be dragged ages back in playing upon the fleshly
innocence of happy accident to gratify his jealous greed of possession,
when it should have been their task to set the soul above the fairest
fortune and the gift of strength in women beyond ornamental whiteness.
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