“Husbands, like spoiled children,” a woman has written, “too often miss the pleasure which might otherwise be theirs, by clamoring for it at the wrong time.  The man who thinks this prolonged courtship previous to the act of sex union wearisome, has never given it a trial.  It is the approach to the marital embrace, as well as the embrace itself, which constitutes the charm of the relation between the sexes.”

It not seldom happens, remarks Adler (op. cit., p. 186), that the insensibility of the wife must be treated—­in the husband.  And Guyot, bringing forward the same point, writes (op. cit., p. 130):  “If by a delay of tender study the husband has understood his young bride, if he is able to realize for her the ineffable happiness and dreams of youth, he will be beloved forever; he will be her master and sovereign lord.  If he has failed to understand her he will fatigue and exhaust himself in vain efforts, and finally class her among the indifferent and cold women.  She will be his wife by duty, the mother of his children.  He will take his pleasure elsewhere, for man is ever in pursuit of the woman who experiences the genesic spasm.  Thus the vague and unintelligent search for a half who can unite in that delirious finale is the chief cause of all conjugal dissolutions.  In such a case a man resembles a bad musician who changes his violin in the hope that a new instrument will bring the melody he is unable to play.”

The fact that there is thus an art in love, and that sexual intercourse is not a mere physical act to be executed by force of muscles, may help to explain why it is that in so many parts of the world defloration is not immediately effected on marriage.[404] No doubt religious or magic reasons may also intervene here, but, as so often happens, they harmonize with the biological process.  This is the case even among uncivilized peoples who marry early.  The need for delay and considerate skill is far greater when, as among ourselves, a woman’s marriage is delayed long past the establishment of puberty to a period when it is more difficult to break down the psychic and perhaps even physical barriers of personality.

It has to be added that the art of love in the act of courtship is not confined to the preliminaries to the single act of coitus.  In a sense the life of love is a continuous courtship with a constant progression.  The establishment of physical intercourse is but the beginning of it.  This is especially true of women.  “The consummation of love,” says Senancour,[405] “which is often the end of love with man is only the beginning of love with woman, a test of trust, a gage of future pleasure, a sort of engagement for an intimacy to come.”  “A woman’s soul and body,” says another writer,[406] “are not given at one stroke at a given moment; but only slowly, little by little, through many stages, are both delivered to the beloved.  Instead of abandoning the young woman to the bridegroom on the wedding night,