ct of his love with others; and each feels that he
is being similarly compared. There can be no final assurance till the
union is completed. A single ill-judged word or action may ruin all.
At any moment another may be preferred--or at least one of the two
may find the other inadequate or deficient.

All this will afford the highest stimulus to emulation. Each will
strive to excel in what the other approves and appreciates--or at any
rate to excel in what is his own particular line. He will be incited to
show himself at his best and to be his best.

But before the bliss of completest union is attained anguish and
rapture in exquisite extremes will be experienced. For the soul of
each will be exposed in all its quivering sensitiveness, and any but
the most delicate touch will be a torture to it. Fortitude of the firmest
will be required to bear the wounds which must necessarily come
from this exposure. Each, too, will have to bear the pain of the
suffering they must inevitably be causing to some few others--and
those others among their very dearest.

As the intimacy of union becomes closer and closer the call for
bodily union will become more and more insistent. In the first
instance--and this is a point which is specially worth noting--the
desire was _entirely_ for spiritual union, for union of the _spirits_ of
each. What each admired and loved in the other was his or her
capacity for love. He realised what a wonderful love the other
_could_ give. And he yearned with all his heart to have that love
directed towards himself. It was a purely spiritual union that his
heart was set on. The thought of bodily union did not enter his head.
But the need for bodily touch as a means of expressing human
feeling is inherent in human nature, and becomes more and more
urgent as the feeling becomes warmer. Friends have to shake hands
with each other and pat each other on the back in order to show the
warmth of their feeling for one another. Women affectionately
embrace one another. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, kiss
one another. It is impossible adequately to express affection without
bodily touch. And in the case of lovers, as the love deepens so also
deepens the compelling need to express this love in bodily union of
the closest possible.

And so the supreme moment arrives when each gives himself
wholly, utterly, and for ever to the other--body, soul, and spirit--and
they twain are one. And the remarkable result e