--“_Every mortal man has been many millions of times a woman._”
* * * * *
Undoubtedly in either sex survives the sum of the feelings and of
the memories of both. But some rare experience may appeal at times
to the feminine element of personality alone,--to one half only of
the phantom-world of Self,--leaving the other hemisphere dormant and
unillumed. And such experience had found embodiment in the marvellous
melody of the serenade which I had heard.
That tremulous sweetness was never masculine; that passional sadness
never was of man:--unisexual both and inseparably blended into a single
miracle of tone-beauty. Echoing far into the mystery of my own past,
the enchantment of that tone had startled from their sleep of ages
countless buried loves, and set the whole delicate swarm fluttering
in some delicious filmy agony of revival,--set them streaming and
palpitating through the Night of Time,--like those myriads eddying
forever through the gloom of the vision of Dante.
* * * * *
They died with the music and the moon,--but not utterly. Whenever in
dream the memory of that melody returns, again I feel the long soft
shuddering of the dead,--again I feel the faint wings spread and thrill,
responsive to the cooing of those spectral flutes, to the throbbing of
those shadowy mandolines. And the elfish ecstasy of their thronging
awakes me; but always with my wakening the delight passes, and in the
dark the sadness only lingers,--unutterable,--infinite...!