He was irritated by the inconsequentiality of her plaints.  Finally, feeling completely safe, he came closer to her and said, “You spoke of remorse, but whether we embark or whether we stand on the bank, isn’t our guilt exactly the same?”

“Yes, I know.  My confessor talks to me like that—­only more severely—­but I think you are both wrong.”

He could not help laughing, and he said to himself, “Remorse is perhaps the condiment which keeps passion from being too unappetizing to the blase.”  Then aloud he jestingly, “Speaking of confessors, if I were a casuist it seems to me I would try to invent new sins.  I am not a casuist, and yet, having looked about a bit, I believe I have found a new sin.”

“You?” she said, laughing in turn.  “Can I commit it?”

He scrutinized her features.  She had the expression of a greedy child.

“You alone can answer that.  Now I must admit that the sin is not absolutely new, for it fits into the known category of lust.  But it has been neglected since pagan days, and was never well defined in any case.”

“Do not keep me in suspense.  What is this sin?”

“It isn’t easy to explain.  Nevertheless I will try.  Lust, I believe, can be classified into:  ordinary sin, sin against nature, bestiality, and let us add demoniality and sacrilege.  Well, there is, in addition to these, what I shall call Pygmalionism, which embraces at the same time cerebral onanism and incest.

“Imagine an artist falling in love with his child, his creation:  with an Herodiade, a Judith, a Helen, a Jeanne d’Arc, whom he has either described or painted, and evoking her, and finally possessing her in dream.

“Well, this love is worse than normal incest.  In the latter sin the guilty one commits only a half-offence, because his daughter is not born solely of his substance, but also of the flesh of another.  Thus, logically, in incest there is a quasi-natural side, almost licit, because part of another person has entered into the engendering of the corpus delicti; while in Pygmalionism the father violates the child of his soul, of that which alone is purely and really his, which alone he can impregnate without the aid of another.  The offence is, then, entire and complete.  Now, is there not also disdain of nature, of the work of God, since the subject of the sin is no longer—­as even in bestiality—­a palpable and living creature, but an unreal being created by a projection of the desecrated talent, a being almost celestial, since, by genius, by artistry, it often becomes immortal?

“Let us go further, if you wish.  Suppose that an artist depicts a saint and becomes enamoured of her.  Thus we have complications of crime against nature and of sacrilege.  An enormity!”

“Which, perhaps, is exquisite!”

He was taken aback by the word she had used.  She rose, opened the door, and called her husband.  “Dear,” she said, “Durtal has discovered a new sin!”