“But, dearest, some women, I’m sure, are unable to express themselves, and others instinctively avoid revealing their true feelings, fearing perhaps to reveal because they may be giving away something it might be to their advantage to keep. They think that if they let any man, even their newly married husband, know how much they love him, they will cheapen themselves in their husband’s eyes, where they desire to be valued the most.” “Do you think you would love me less if you felt you owned me less? If you did, your love has possibly too much of ownership in it. Love is not possession, any more than it is the inability to possess.” § 81 The erotic acme is the detumescence following a tumescence which activates, in order to secure, a repose which can exist in consciousness only by contrast with the intense activity, vivification and vitalization of spheres of experience otherwise remaining without or beyond one’s ken. A kiss which is ever so little retarded, a youth laying softly his lips on those of a fair maiden, and, for the period of a breath or two not taking them away, feeling that not alone the lips touched hers nor yet only his arms embraced her, is filled with a natural response which tingles through his frame to his very fingertips and makes soft and undulating the sea crag on which they stand. More of her at once would be too keen a pleasure, would make him faintly dizzy with a joy to which he is unoriented. The halo of that first kiss fades not in a day but lingers through his sleep, recurring poignantly like the after image of the sun caught by chance directly in his eyes. All his being is pervaded by the sweet breathlessness of that virgin experience of a maiden’s lips, a touch that spreads like fire through his body and craves quenching by another kiss which but extends the influence of the first. “Our lips have met, a touch compared with which our hand-clasp was a grinding of rocks in the mad surging of the ocean surf. “Our lips have met, a fragrance above the honeysuckle and the roses of the hedge. “Our lips have met, our breasts have asked us too, why should not they repose on one another. Our hands have known each other’s sides, and flanks have questioned why they also might not have the soft contact. “Why should not all the remotest parts of us clamor to share in this meeting of two lovers’ lips? Each of us is whole and every part fired to yearn for what every other part feels. “I look into your eyes and see the world. All that invites to do and feel and learn. There’s not a drop of blood within my veins that does not hurry on its joyous course, to tell the uttermost confines of me, that here in you I find a counterpart, for every region of my living self.