Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/386

 together—for life. From this writer are also to be noted in various periodicals a considerable series of dramatic studies of passional friendships between adults—in accent chiefly tragic.

A noteworthy historical novel, "The King With Two Faces", by the late Miss M. E. Coleridge, deals with the personality of Gustavus Third of Sweden. It is based on his strongly emotional intimacies, his favouritism, and the conspiracy of Ankerström, in which were intrigued against their unfortunate and impolitic sovereign many of the comely young noblemen, who played such mystic roles in his psychic life. The authour discerns in her studies the "abnormal" currents of the King's nature. Throughout the story, there are such phases—as to Fersen, Ribbing, and so on—that are faithful to historical analysis. Almost the final scene (a strange one, in which Fersen and his dying king look into each other's eyes confessionally, for the last time) is to be 'noted. The introduction of such an ingredient in the story is as reserved as one would expect in an English romance; but its authour's literary manner in general inclines to the merely suggestive, elliptical and over-terse.

The commentator on homosexualism in belles-lettres is often criticized for supposing such an ingredient to be latent where it does not at all conclusively appear. Indeed, one recent German psychiater makes the foolish observation that uranians are so predisposed that. they are incapable of seeing, either in letters, arts or life, the difference between ardent friendship and homosexual love. This accusation is anything but well-based. The first duty of the sexual psychiater is to keep clear two such currents of emotion. When however the sentiment of friendship, so-called, is invested with a distinctly passional quality, such a tale merits recognition as perhaps more or less of uranian tendency—verging perceptibly, but not