Page:A Virgin Heart.pdf/183

Rh was clear and brutal. After a moment's reﬂection he continued.

"The inevitable accompaniment of Platonic love is secret vice. Simple flirtation leads to the same consequences. Double flirtation is secret vice a deux, discreet and hypocritical. Triple flirtation, if it exists, would still be secret vice a deux, but avowed, frank. It would perhaps be less dangerous than double flirtation, which is simply realization artifically provoked. No virility can stand that. Women, for another reason less easy to explain, are destroyed by it just like men. Men are fools. If you want a woman, take a woman and behave like a fine animal fulfilling its functions! And above all beware of young girls. Young girls have destroyed the virility of more men than all the Messelinas in the world. Sentimental conversations, furtive kisses and hand-squeezings are almost always accompanied in an impressionable man, especially if he has several months or even a few weeks of chastity behind him, by loss of vigor. Then do you know what happens? One gets used to it. I believe that our organs, despite their close interdependence, have a certain