In his
younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he
loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be
enough to make him fall in love with her. And 50, at an age when it would
appear--since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective
pleasure--that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part in
its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most physical
order, without any foundation in desire. At this time of life a man has
already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer
evolves by itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws, before
his passive and astonished heart. We come to its aid; we falsify it by
memory and by suggestion; recognising one of its symptoms we recall and
recreate the rest. Since we possess its hymn, engraved on our hearts in
its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the opening lines,
potent with the admiration which her beauty inspires, for us to remember
all that follows. And if she begin in the middle, where it sings of our
existing, henceforward, for one another only, we are well enough attuned
to that music to be able to take it up and follow our partner, without
hesitation, at the first pause in her voice.
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