In Spain there are two kinds of women: the mother and the prostitute. And both are mothers. The land is sensuous in its air, its flowers. The Spaniard is not sensuous at all. In the nineteenth century, a group of romantic Spanish poets endeavored to sing of Spain as had the Germans and the English. No more frustrate coldness exists in all the literature of failure. “_Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bluehen_” could never have been written by a Spaniard about Spain. For the Spaniard is as abstract in his bodily lusts as he is concrete in his ideals. Of his wife, he seeks the haven of morale: of his prostitute, he seeks the peace of respite. The Spanish prostitute with her Cross lying within her breasts is the least mercenary, the most womanly of her class. She is mellow and maternal. She bears with her a great sense of sin: and the man who touches her lips touches pity. From man she receives two treasures, bread and shame: she is eager to give, in return, her humility and comfort. She has no delights of subtle sense to barter: but he who comes to her, weary and broken, will find her arms mysteriously soothing, as if her acceptance of sin were a Christian solace, as if her acceptance of shame were heartening to his pride. And the Spanish wife knows of the prostitute and suffers her. She brings for the husband an escape from the chaste rigors of family and church into the anarchy of unorganized affection and of Christian pity. She makes the work of the wife less arduous. * * * * * Human happiness is the full deep flow of human energy. It has many ways, nor is it rare. The madman is happy since all of his thought and sense falls into the pattern of his will. The lover is happy. Children are happy, eating or at play. Soldiers are happy in battle. And everyone is happy in dream. There are happy nations: nations at war, nations in the madness of any enterprise, whether it be of growth or dissolution. But Spain is not happy. Her energy does not flow. It stands locked in a diapason of pause. Nor is Spain unhappy. Unhappiness is the thwarted need of energy to flow. Spain’s energy is not thwarted. It does not flow: it does not need to flow. It is absorbed in its own perpetual balance. Spain is a dark soul. Sun is a flame in her land, and her land is a storm of color. But the soul of Spain is neither sun nor storm. It is neither gayety nor grief. It is a dark contentment, midway held between ecstasy and sleep. Outside the tremor and traffic of spiritual movement, Spain moves like a somnambulant. Her body moves: but within her shut eyes there is a vision truer than her stirring: a vision stirless and composed. Her mood is dark and stagnant. Yet it is pleasant, for it is not pain. Her soul is caressed passively by this rhythmic swing between the extremes of action: as if the long ages of Spain’s agitation had bred this sensuous delight in their denial.