Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/336

 "Bosco, thou seekest curiosities. I have one for thee." And therewith Kassad drew from the quiver, which he wore in the circusring along with his white burnus, an arrow, rusted with time …"

After the young Beduin has told the story of this arrow, which is a family-relic, (connected with the murder of the young Prince Louis Napoléon, in Zululand, in 1879) Bosco hesitates to accept the gift, as too preciously personal to Kassad. But Kassad says:

"No, I would not sell it; but I will give it to thee, O, my Brother! Does not my life itself now belong to thee, shouldst thou ask it? Art thou not my second Self?—another Kassad, just as I am another Bosco? Have I not given thee much more than any arrow—my whole self!" …

Such is this curious and touching little scene, in which homosexual-physical love is traced between the lines. Another episode is that in which Bosco—after whom all his female spectators and acquaintances sigh in vain—refuses the advances of a fair Mexican girl; thereby nearly drawing upon himself a peculiarly treacherous and horrible death. The story is a singular mixture of the serious and the humourous, the dramatic and the satiric, thrown into an extravagant plot; but is certainly artistic and picturesque.

A considerable contemporary series of novels, more or less openly and distinctively homosexual, more or less to be classed as real literature, is noticeable in German. This element grows larger annually. It is usually under pseudonyms, or is anonymous; and a portion of it is privately printed, or nominally so. Of course, the merits of such tales, their vigour of emotional concepts, ideality, refinement, truth to life literary art, sincerity of accent and originality are extremely variable factors. Many representatives of this class of novel make their way into the more "specialistic" German bookshops; being from