Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/618

 terror underfying it … "If only Heaven will deign to grant me an unvarying purity of soul!" Some months earlier, had occurred already a long retrospective entry; in which Platen reverted to his still "unextinguished" love for Count d'Argenteau, for Brandenstein, and even for Hornstein, as all so much "less sensual" than this passion for Schmidtlein. By the by, in this revue amoureuse he does not mention his early relations with Xylander, nor those sentiments that had carried him so far with the young painter Issel. But now Platen becomes even more helpless, and hence more casuistic. On June 8th, we read of a walk with Eduard; when …"I held him embraced by the middle of his body, which darling burden pressed on my shoulder. One could say that this was sensually remarked; but if my soul be pure, why cannot I enjoy the sense of his beauty?" …Yes, certainly "one could say" that any such entry was not one of love for the mere abstract! But the tide of sexual passion was to rise much higher, and to carry both or them along with it, this time. A few days later, (June 7, 1918) sitting in a retired corner of the beautiful old Hofgarten, in Würzburg, reading together a most appropriate drama, "… we held each other embraced. His head rested on my breast. Our cheeks often touched"… Platen may well exclaim, when in a sort of Rausch by the memory, "These aspects … are joyful, but from one standpoint too dangerous. A hostile goddess can separate us, while wishing to unite us—the goddess Passion. We are young, and we love each other ardently. But I hope that God will aid us to leap over this abyss. I believe that it will be best for us to interchange frankly our ideas on this subject, and to fight off the enemy with United forces …" Was there ever a more amusing, pathetic, childish, and fatal policy toward mutual self-control, in any sort of love-affair? One wonders if Platen could have believed such a procedure to be of common sense! Was it practiced at all? At any rate it did not help.