This self-assertion, this power of resistance (Rabbia), is portrayed by Heyse with manifold variations: Atalanta, in the drama "Meleager," possesses the entire untamed wildness of the Amazon type; she prefers life and sport amid the freedom of nature--the race, feats of skill with the lance, and the occupation of the wildwood--to effeminate luxury and flattering caresses; she would rather wear the crown of victory than the bridal wreath. In Syritha we see the first coyness, which, roused by marriage, flees; in "L'Arrabbiata," maidenly pride, which feels how close to the timid request, in the soul of man, lies coarse desire; in the maiden of Treppi, we have the instinctive refusal of maidenhood; in Marianne ("Mutter und Kind"), womanly pride which increases twofold in the so-called fallen woman, under her sense of unmerited shame; in Madeleine ("Die Reise nach dem Glück"), the sense of duty opposed to the conceptions of morality inculcated from childhood; in Lore ("Lorenz und Lore"), the feeling of shame of a young girl, from whose lips a confession of her love has escaped in the presence of death; in Lottka, the melancholy reserve caused by a sense of inherited degradation; in fair Kätchen, the indignant despair of a young girl at finding herself attractive to every one, which makes her wish all her admirers and her own beauty far away; in Lea, the aversion of a highly developed and reserved woman to allowing any one to have a suspicion of her weakness; in Toinette, the abhorrence of an ice-bound heart to feigning a passion it does not yet feel; in Irene, the strict conventionality of a little princess; in Julie, the coldness of a Cordelia nature--until the supreme moment arrives when all these bonds are burst, when all these hearts are kindled, when the man-hatred of the Amazon, and the coyness of the young maiden, and the modesty of dawning womanhood, and the pride of the wife, and the sense of duty of those who have been strictly brought up, and the melancholy of those who have been humbled, and the mantle of the snow-queen, all, all flame up, like wood on one mighty funeral pyre, and ascend in sweet incense on the altar of the god of love.