Here also the line of development is a zigzag. Women sometimes act as though their whole liberation was of no avail. But in spite of much that is contradictory, the evolution of love—above all through the new woman’s claims of love—is to him who stands high enough to have a full view of the situation, the most certain of realities. Evidence of this evolution can be found in life as well as in literature, where it now takes every kind of form, from experiences translated into genuine poetry down to the productions which tempt one to think that these people have only loved to get “copy” for a book. The feminine fiction of the present day reminds one of a relief on a sacrificial altar in the Roman Forum, where the ox, the sheep, and the pig proceed in file to meet the knife. Hecatombs of these animals—in the likeness of husbands or lovers—are now sacrificed to Eros by the new woman. It may not be very long before the vow of fidelity is exchanged for an oath of silence and the marriage contract contains a provision that in case of a rupture love-letters are not to be used as literature. No doubt it will ever remain true that a living book on love is never written with other ink than blood. But such books are not those which resemble a trial in which the prosecutor, witness, judge, and executioner are united in one person. But whether powerful or weak, discreet or audacious, noble or ignoble—the new woman’s books are always instructive to those who seek to follow the course of love’s evolution. The great danger to this evolution is that women never take sufficient account of sensuousness, nor men of spirituality. And it is especially woman who now one-sidedly applies her own erotic nature—with its warm penetration, its completeness that frees it from temptation—as the ethical and erotic standard for that of man with its sudden heat, its dangerous incompleteness.