Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/619

 For a fortnight later (June 22) while alone together in a little garden, over at Heidingsfeld, near Würzburg, "… Eduard at last gave himself up to me with a tenderness without reserve, a tenderness equal to mine. Wo were simply one soul, and our bodies were like two trees whose branches interlace closely forever." Ah, Platen had no illusions now that his love must not be crowned with "sensuality."! But his moral conscience was in an agony. He speaks of this "surrender" in a letter, by and by to be written (mentioned in his entry of November 11 1819) to Gruber, as "the catastrophe of this melancholy history, and my crime;" which the sensible Gruber declares was merely "a betrayal through passion," adding that "although I myself detest the vice, by God and all that is holy, I do not in the least detest you for it!" But in spite of his troubled conscience, Platen exclaims that at last, once, in his life, he can say that he "has lived!" He affirms that such a state of things between him and Eduard increases, not lessens, the "ideal" qualify in his sentiment for Eduard. That delusion is as old and instinctive as the eternal war between natural and artificial ethics.

But this sudden unity was not to continue. It had to suffer a sharp defeat, for precisly that same reason which had given it such similisexual completeness. During the next few weeks, Eduard Schmidtlein avoided his new bosom-friend as much as before; causing the mystified Platen much wonderment audand [sic] sorrow. What was worse, as the month was ending, Eduard wrote to Platen that he had decided that mutual relationships between them would best not be continued! An abrupt interview, and naturally a bitter quarrel, resulted: then came a reconciliation; but not a satisfactory one. "Eduard loves me," writes Platen, fresh from the embraces of his adored Adrastus, "but he is the most singular and inscrutable of creatures." Several letters are interchanged,