Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/617

 of the plan. Schmidtlein seems to have fended it off. Poor Platen grew more mystified and despairing than ever; for this upshot hinted at a real indifference, on the side of "Adrastus", even to their knowing each other.

But finally they met. There was no go-between. Platen broke the ice. March 17, 1819, they spoke; on the street. After some weeks, not earlier, began visits between them. Platen made the first call, with much timidity, May 1, 1819. To his relief he found that Eduard was a refined, gifted and most serious character; worthy of friendship, whatever else might come with that. The few letters from Schmidtlein that presently are quoted at full-length sketch his type, though we have no way of judging of a physical beauty that so fired Platen. But Eduard still hung back. The acquaintance stayed "roasted all of one side," like the famous Shakespearean egg. Edward did not return Platen's visits. He said that he "would call," then did not call; and generally he avoided Platen coldly, though'never with actual discourtesy. What is more, something like male coquetry soon appears, if vaguely, in Edward's attitude toward Platen. It is an element quite in logic with what presently we shall discover as to Eduard's psychic self. But, in 1819, we find that the two young men had become really intimate. By June, they were walking, studying, reading, talking confidentially, and so on day by day. Platen was alternately most happy and most—"unsatisfied." This is easy to understand.. There is little reason to doubt that Schmidtlein now amused himself by doing what Platen expressively calls "exciting the power of his personal beauty" on Platen. Platen became only more and more aware of his own distinctly "sensual" yearnings for Eduard. Thus on June 3-8 1819, he says of Eduard: "Coming into my room, he dazzled me, like the figure of a demigod …"; and then we find an aspiration that has an almost comic effect, if we did not realize the moral