undisturbed. And, of these, none is more fixed than an abstract love.

Different in men than in women, it is, for the former, an instinct, a
need, to serve rather than be served: their desire is for a shining
image superior, at best, to both lust and maternity. This
consciousness, grown so dim that it is scarcely perceptible, yet still
alive, is not extinguished with youth, but lingers hopeless of
satisfaction through the incongruous years of middle age. There is
never a man, gifted to any degree with imagination, but eternally
searches for an ultimate loveliness not disappearing in the circle of
his embrace--the instinctively Platonic gesture toward the only
immortality conceivable in terms of ecstasy.

A truth, now, in very low esteem! With the solidification of society,
of property, the bond of family has been tremendously exalted, the mere
fact of parenthood declared the last sanctity. Together with this,
naturally, the persistent errantry of men, so vulgarly misunderstood,
has become only a reprehensible paradox. The entire shelf of James
Branch Cabell's books, dedicated to an unquenchable masculine idealism,
has, as well, a paradoxical place in an age of material sentimentality.
Compared with the novels of the moment, _Domnei_ is an isolated, a
heroic fragment of a vastly deeper and higher structure. And, of its
many aspects, it is not impossible that the highest, rising over even
its heavenly vision, is the rare, the simple, fortitude of its
statement.

Whatever dissent the philosophy of Perion and Melicent may breed, no
one can fail to admire the steady courage with which it is upheld.
Aside from its special preoccupation, such independence in the face of
ponderable threat, such accepted isolation, has a rare stability in a