Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/334

 How I wish I could just feel "slept-out" for once! But can one expect that anywhere down in this world of ours?"

In one of Мacano's novels, occurs the subjoined episode. The hero of the tale, young Count Alexander Althoff, of remarkable good-looks, is roving about America (in the famous "Forty-Nine" period) in incognito, as "Bosco" as a circus-artist. Althoff is a dionysian-uranian. One night, when in poor spirits, he finds that a young Arab, an athlete in the troupe, Kassad, whose person and strength make him the admiration of the town, is similarly depressed. Different members of the show have received invitations from their feminine public to be guests at suppers, after the performance ends. But neither young man wishes for demi-mondaine or other female society; they are indifferent to all billets-doux. Kassad, like Bosco, is a dionysian-uranian; Kassad being described as "the pearl of the Beduin troupe, a youth of the build of Hercules, a creature as if cast out of bronze, with his ravenblack hair and his eyes like those of a gazelle." …

"Bosco and his new acquaintance were standing under the street-lamp. They read their "invitations."

"Do you care to accept; dear Kassad?" asked Bosco. The athletic Bedouin shook his head. "No—no," said he in his deep yet soft voice. "And you, Bosco?"

Bosco crumpled up contemptuously the note that had been given him.

"Not I, any more than you."

Then the two looked at one another—a long keen look. And they had—understood each other.

Each of them had been invited by a young and pretty woman to a—tete-a-tete; and yet each one declined, and had sent away the two maid-servants who had brought them the messages.

Then each young man held out his hand to the other, with a strong, lingering clasp, knowing what each meant; and then they gave one another the kiss of Brotherhood. From now on they would