But it seemed to me that the extraordinary emotion awakened by that
tropical melody needed an explanation more qualitative than the
explanation above attempted. I felt sure that the dead past to which
the music had made appeal must have been a special past,--that some
particular class or group of emotional memories had been touched. Yet
what class?--what group? For the time being, I could not even venture a
guess.
Long afterwards, however, some chance happening revived for me with
surprising distinctness the memory of the serenade;--and simultaneously,
like a revelation, came the certainty that the whole spell of the
melody--all its sadness and all its sweetness--had been supremely and
uniquely _feminine_.
--“Assuredly,” I reflected, as the new conviction grew upon me, “the
primal source of all human tenderness has been the Eternal Feminine....
Yet how should melody uttering only the soul of woman have been composed
by man, and bestir within man this innominable quickening of emotional
reminiscence?”