Demetrios passed very slowly in front of them without allowing himself to admire them.
He could never view a woman’s nakedness without intense emotion. He could not realize any feeling of disgust in the presence of the dead, or of insensibility with very young girls. That evening every woman could have charmed him. Provided she kept silence and did not display any more ardour than the minimum demanded by politeness her beauty did not matter. He preferred, also, that she should have a “coarse” body, for the more his thoughts were fixed upon perfect shapes the further away from them did his desire depart. The trouble, which the impression of living beauty gave to him, was of an exclusively cerebral sensuality which reduced to naught other excitation. He recollected with agony that he had remained for an hour like an old man by the side of the most admirable woman he had ever held in his arms. Since that night he had learned to select less pure mistresses.
“Friend,” a voice said, “do you not know me?”
He turned, shook his head and went on his way, for he never visited the same girl twice. That was the only principle he carried out in his visits to the gardens.
“Clonarion!”
“Gnathene!”
“Plango!”
“Mnaïs!”
“Crobyle!”