O me, unfortunate wretch (sayd she) what poysonous heates be these, which thus torment me?... O you Stars judge rightly of me, & if I have with wicked intent made myself a pray to fancie, or if by any idle lustes I framed my harte fit for such an impression, then let this plague dayly increase in me, till my name bee odious to womankind ... No, no, you cannot help me: Sinne must be the mother, and shame the daughter of my affection. And yet these be but childish objections ... it is the impossibilitie that dooth torment me: for, unlawfull desires are punished after the effect of enjoying, but impossible desires are punished by the desire itself ... And yet ... what do I, sillie wench, knowe what Love hath prepared for me? Doo I not see my mother, as well, at least as furiouslie as my selfe, love Zelmane? And should I be wiser than my mother? Either she sees a possibilitie in that which I think impossible, or else impossible loves neede not misbecome me. And doo I not see Zelmane (who dothe not thinke a thought which is not first wayed by wisdom and virtue) doth not she vouchsafe to love me with like ardor? I see it, her eyes depose it to be true; what then? And if she can love poore me, shall I thinke scorne to love such a woman as Zelmane? Away then all vaine examinations of why and how. Thou lovest me, excellent Zelmane, and I love thee: And with that, embrasing the very grounde whereon she lay, she said to her selfe (for even to her selfe she was ashamed to speake it out in words) O my Zelmane, governe and direct me: for I am wholy given over to thee.[10] There could scarcely be a more economical record of how girls were taught to regard homosexual passion in sixteenth century England; of the heroine’s ignorance that any satisfaction of the desire was possible; and of her blameless rectitude, for she has both her mother and her idol as examples, and the reader knows that she is under the spell of legitimate sex attraction. That Sidney’s own moral attitude was not necessarily his heroine’s is suggested only in his wording of an oracle’s prophecy to her father earlier: “Thy youngest shall with nature’s bliss embrace An _uncouth_ love, which _nature_ hateth most” [author’s italics.] Still, he was careful that Zelmane’s secret should become known to the princess before the pair had opportunity for so much as a kiss.