From the purest caress on a mass of hair to the greatest hurricane of voluptuousness, touch always keeps the character moulded for it by its anatomy. Touch, in love, is always made oversensitive by voluptuousness, always deeply sensual, is always a positive, definite, uncontrasted and uncontrastable possession. Woman may delude herself into believing that she is unblemished by man's contact when his hand has but touched the hem of her garments or the leather of her shoes; but when skin has touched skin, when a finger has touched a finger, something is already lost of that waxy varnish which nature spreads upon the virginal fruit still preserving the perfume of the tree that nourished it. A hand that clasps a hand means, in love, two fires that blend in one; a mass of hair that touches a mass of hair means two streams of voluptuousness rushing into the bed of one river; two feet that come in contact are always two sparks that fly. A molecule of a man who loves can never touch impunely a molecule of the woman who returns his love; and although the contact may be more rapid than lightning, every molecule that returns to the spheres of its own individuality carries away something that does not belong to it, and leaves with the other something of itself. Touch soft iron with the loadstone and you will see it magnetized; touch a molecule of a man with that of a woman and the two molecules will not be what they were before. Touch is always the act of possession, and the thousand contacts can, gradually, steal so much, that we may find ourselves carried into the sphere of the woman we love, while she has entirely passed into our sphere. Not in vain the modest woman trembles and rebels at every innocent contact. Every sensation of touch, in love, means a boundary that is eliminated between two properties; it means the loss of a property.