It is not hypocrisy alone that makes modesty more exacting in higher races; in exquisitely elevated natures a contact is more dangerous because it radiates rapidly into the field of voluptuousness, into that of the other senses and that of sentiment. Vulgar natures begin where refined natures end; and while too elevated natures live long together, held back by the barrier of a handshake, the bold and uncouth rustic throws a kiss to the girl and embraces her at the first declaration of love. It is typical of this most powerful passion to perform a hundred miracles a day and thus arrest voluptuousness at the last boundary of kissing; but adroitness and fortune are necessary to make it possible to stop there for a long time. From handclasping to the kiss the path may be very long and even endless; but beyond a kiss given and returned, every definite boundary has vanished and everything is possible. Even in touch love has but two principal stations before the goal is reached; handclasping and kiss. Whoever believes she has remained a virgin after a kiss given and returned is a hypocrite, like him who believes that the studied reticence of lust may still leave something to conquer. O women who have the dangerous fortune to be beautiful and to be desired, do not let your adorers go beyond handclasping; you may in rare cases arrive at the kiss that you may receive; but remember that a kiss returned is a tremendous bond, which you should never sign,--never, of course, unless you intend to change your name. Sight is the first messenger of love, and in elect natures it is so prodigal of joy to lovers as to excel, in extensity if not in intensity, even the insuperable heights of voluptuousness. Sight possesses everything save the delirium of possession, and rapid and penetrating as it is, it sounds at a stroke the abysses of infinite beauty, over which is suspended, as in a halo, the object of our love. What one contemplates with the eyes of love from head to foot always ends in two infinities into which desire hurls itself with frenzied audacity and insatiable curiosity. Sight is made to accompany us in that delicious excursion; and as it can tarry long and suavely at a dimple of the cheek, at the little vortex of a curl or at the opalescence of a nail, it can also compel us to pass and repass with vertiginous speed, a thousand times in a minute, through the divine lines that enclose our treasure.