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He had just seen the reality.
A warm and living skin, under which one felt the circulation of
passionate blood; an outline with the precision of marble and the
undulation of the wave; a high and impassive mien, mingling refusal with
attraction, and summing itself up in its own glory; hair of the colour
of the reflection from a furnace; a gallantry of adornment producing in
herself and in others a tremor of voluptuousness, the half-revealed
nudity betraying a disdainful desire to be coveted at a distance by the
crowd; an ineradicable coquetry; the charm of impenetrability,
temptation seasoned by the glimpse of perdition, a promise to the senses
and a menace to the mind; a double anxiety, the one desire, the other
fear. He had just seen these things. He had just seen Woman.
He had seen more and less than a woman; he had seen a female.
And at the same time an Olympian. The female of a god.
The mystery of sex had just been revealed to him.
And where? On inaccessible heights--at an infinite distance.
O mocking destiny! The soul, that celestial essence, he possessed; he
held it in his hand. It was Dea. Sex, that terrestrial embodiment, he
perceived in the heights of heaven. It was that woman.
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