George was excited and talking volubly. Elizabeth encouraged him. Females know instinctively or by bitter experience that males like to tell them things. It is so very curious that we talk of vanity as if it were almost exclusively feminine, whereas both sexes are equally vain. Perhaps males are vainer. Women are sometimes plainly revolted by really inane compliments, while there is no flattery too gross for a male. There simply isn’t. And not one of us is free from it. However much you may be on your guard, however much you may think you dislike it, you will find yourself instinctively angling for female flattery—and getting it. Oh, yes, you’ll get it, just as long as that subtle female instinct warns them there is potency in your loins.... “Mother of the race of Æneas, voluptuous delight of gods and men, sacred Aphrodite”—how does it go? But the poet is right. She, the sacred one, the imperious reproductive instinct, with all Her wiles and charms, is indeed the ruler over all living things, in the waters, in the air, on land. Over us her sway is complete, for it is not seasonal but permanent. (Who was the lady who said that if the animals don’t make love all the time the reason is that they are _bêtes?_) Priests, with all weapons from circumcision to prudery, have warred with Her; legislators have laid down rules for Her; well-meaning persons have tried to domesticate Her. Useless! “At thy coming, goddess,” the celibate hides his shaved crown and sneaks to a brothel, the clerk in holy orders enters into holy matrimony, the lawyer visits the little shop-girl he “helps,” domestic peace is shaken alive with adulteries. For man is an ambulatory digestive tube which wants to keep alive, and Death waits for him. Descartes was a fool in these matters, like so many philosophers. “I think, therefore I am.” Idiot! I am because others loved; I love that others may be. Hunger and Death are the realities, and between those great chasms flits a little Life. The enemy of Death is not Thought, not Apollo with gold shafts of light, useless against the Foe of gods and men, as you see him in the prologue to “Alkestis.” It is She, the Cyprian, who triumphs, woman-like with her wiles. Generations She yields Him, the Devourer, as His prey, and unwearyingly raises up new races of men and women. It is She who swells the loins of men with an intolerable burden of seed; She who makes ready the thirsty womb; She who creates implacable desire and infinite yearning and compels the life-giving act; *** *** ****** *** **** ***** ********* **** *** **** **** ********* ******; She who plumps the flat white belly and then, treacherous and cruel to Her instrument once Her purpose is achieved, with intolerable anguish tears forth from shaking mother-flesh the feeble fruit of Man. All the thoughts and emotions and desires of adult men and women circle about Her, and Her enemies are but Death’s friends. You may elude Her with asceticism, you may thwart