"Our girls are kept in ignorance about sex. It's very few of them, Yetta, who have read a book like Forel's. And the boys are sent to school in the brothels. Most brides come to this business of sex, thinking of it--a bit timorously--as a Great White Sacrifice to Love. Most men think of sex as the climax of a spree. That any such marriages are happy is a wonder to me." "But why doesn't some one have the courage to tell the truth?" Yetta exclaimed. "It isn't as simple as that," he replied. "It isn't so much a question of courage as it is of ability. You,--if a young woman asked you,--could you tell her? I couldn't if a boy asked me. I could tell him about the mechanism of sex--just as Forel and a dozen writers have done. There are plenty of technical words. But I'd have to stop there. The reality can't be expressed in scientific language--and the gutter words are false when you talk of love. I'll warrant that you wouldn't like to tackle the job." "It would be hard," she admitted. And then--"But isn't there any hope? Must there always be this misunderstanding?" "Oh, no! At first, with primitive man, there wasn't any such _mis_understanding--there was just lack of understanding. Love is such a new thing in the history of life that we are just vaguely beginning to understand it. Man--we say--is an animal who has gained consciousness of self. But this did not happen suddenly. It must have taken thousands and thousands of years. The process is not yet complete. Out of general consciousness the animal that was becoming man, gradually, in one point after another, won self-consciousness. Gradually sex became a little more than the simple reflex act that we see in the lower animals to-day--forgotten as soon as accomplished. It was not until what we call the Middle Ages that man became conscious of something more in love than physical passion. The love affairs of Mary, Queen of Scots, would seem very unspiritual to us to-day. And think how very recent that was compared to the date of the Stone Age. It was only in the last century that the romantic idea took possession of literature. Like all new ideas it was full of extravagances. Now we call ourselves Realists--the necessary reaction. But there is more of the new spirit of love in Zola than Shakespeare ever dreamed of. I doubt if he would recognize a modern production of _Romeo and Juliet_ any more than Christ would recognize his service in a High Mass. "As we begin to get used to this startlingly new concept of love, we'll develop the words to express it. It's too big a task to be accomplished by one brain or one generation." They fell silent again. Yetta, looking off across the lake,--unconscious of the beauty of the view,--was thinking desperately of this matter of love, and was realizing with pain, as all who try to write must do, her utter inability to express what this Mystery of Love meant to her. She could not even tell Isadore.