A Leak In The Safe

The young girl in her with her blushing timidities veiled the Amazon.

Nature had made this girl of the people in the vast and shining mold of the great coquettes, not of those who snare imbecile imaginations with the bird lime of love’s apish tricks, but of those who have the murderous calm of the sphinx, who excite guilty passions with cold cruelty.

Modern science, which takes note of such facts and explains or thinks it explains them, will never fathom the secret of the influence in such colossal proportions, of one human creature upon another. It is futile to use the word love. That is merely lighting one abyss by digging a second in the first. What is love? And how and why is love born in human hearts?

“He is not a human being like other people,” said Nonon dreamily, her beautiful arm outlined by the narrow sleeve of her bodice resting against her earthen jar, set on the margin of the well.

— from Bewitched by J. Barbey D’Aurevilly