Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/348

 he is yet indistinctly homosexual and has held aloof in indifference from such rapports. He has no end of vivacity, of wit, of a curiously conflicting, lively—virility, one may say. His disposition is utterly selfish, frivolous, and taquinante enough to take pleasure in tormenting the affection of Reutler, without appreciating its sexual force. Reutler's struggle is emphatically an ethical struggle. He believes himself alone in the world under such sexual torment. He will never let Paul-Eric know! He will even accept the cruel comedy of seeming to despise, to hate Paul, of humiliating and alienating the petted boy utterly—rather than confess himself unable to conquer himself. He will maintain the strictly psychic limits. One episode is that in which Reutler loses control of his temper, through Eric's own outrageously bad behaviour. He insults the spoiled youth so practically that Eric shuts himself up in a fury, in his own apartments in the chateau, refusing to meet Reutler. When Reutler begs him, for the sake of his health, at least to go down sometimes to the garden, the youth sends a curt note that he will go into the garden when the garden comes up to his rooms! Reutler therewith has a superb staircase, corridor and garden-terrasse built—as his tacit expiation. Heterosexualism is made a complication of the story by several women; especially throngh a pretty waif, Marie, brought into the chateau. The final scenes bring not only Reutler's disclosures, and Eric's assent, but a voluntary death to the two brothers, as their chateau burns.

Two brief incidents only in this curious romance can be cited here—in part; the extracts being the first English translations of any portions of the story. The first is the soliloquy, the prayer, of Reutler, as he watches Eric asleep, still dressed in an extravagantly costly female costume, that of a Byzantine princess, which the lad has worn to a public masquerade-ball; where he has unfortunately disgraced himself and the family-name, by being recognized and