She
knew that Max had been restrained from wooing her only because of the
impassable gulf that lay between them. Ardor in Max when marriage was
impossible would have been an insult to Yolanda. His reticence for
conscience' sake and for her sake was the most chivalric flattery he
could have paid her. She saw the situation clearly, and, trusting Max
implicitly, felt safe in giving rein to her heart. She did not care to
hide from him its true condition. On the contrary she wished him to be
as sure of her as she was of him, for after all that would be the only
satisfaction they would ever know.
I argued: If Yolanda were the princess, betrothed to the Dauphin, the
gulf between her and Max was as impassable as if she were a burgher
girl. In neither case could she hope to marry him. Therefore, her
girlish wooing was but the outcry of nature and was without boldness.
The paramount instinct of all nature is to flower. Even the frozen
Alpine rock sends forth its edelweiss, and the heart of a princess is
first the heart of a woman, and must blossom when its spring comes. All
the conventions that man can invent will not keep back the flower. All
created things, animate and inanimate, have in them an uncontrollable
impulse which, in their spring, reverts with a holy retrospect to the
great first principle of existence, the love of reproduction.
Yolanda's spring had come, and her heart was a flower with the sacred
bloom. Being a woman, she loved it and cuddled it for the sake of the
pain it brought, as a mother fondles a wayward child.
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