Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/554

 hung over the head of a young society-man, of notable wealth, æsthetic, and of fine intellectual and moral character. He was the last person to be supposed to make a hasty marriage. His engagement and wedding came in a trice, quite disconcerting any further gossip as to his nature—though causing much ordinary comment at the time.

A similisexual man occasionally takes his betrothed, or his wife, into his confidence—from the first; appeals to her pity, even if she cannot "understand" his sexual nature. Sometimes she is thus his good angel, his dearest friend through a whole life together, in which their love is without any sexualism. But many wives of Uranians do not know, or guess, or endure well such a situation. Sometimes the confidence or conduct of the husband precipitates a melancholy rupture, if not one in violence.

Or as his only safe course, however difficult, however often it may have been dismissed as impossible, no matter what the pain or the comment, the betrothed Uranian breaks his engagement—retreats in time. A pretext is concocted, even a physician's aid is called in—for a statement of importance, of real disease, and so on. This, not to speak of intelligent objection by the bride. The writer was informed of a case in France, a couple of years ago, in a family of high social mark, where the young fiancé convinced of the permanency of his vita sexualis, and of the. misery consequent before him and his betrothed, advanced the hereditary insanity in one part of his family-line, as a barrier. It was effective. A London physician has furnished the writer with a more courageous instance. A young Uranian, affianced to a young lady of fine intellectual and moral qualities, decided that the best escape for unhappiness for them both was to take the fiancée into his dark secret. To make its gravity clear, he had to explain to her the whole problem of similisexualism—a topic little known to women. The lady