Why should not Maurice have been rendered restless and anxious by the unseen nearness of a young woman who was in the next room to him, just as the persons who have the dread of cats are made conscious of their presence through some unknown channel?  Is it anything strange that the larger and more powerful organism should diffuse a consciousness of its presence to some distance as well as the slighter and feebler one?  Is it strange that this mysterious influence or effluence should belong especially or exclusively to the period of complete womanhood in distinction from that of immaturity or decadence?  On the contrary, it seems to be in accordance with all the analogies of nature,—­analogies too often cruel in the sentence they pass upon the human female.

Among the many curious thoughts which came up in the doctor’s mind was this, which made him smile as if it were a jest, but which he felt very strongly had its serious side, and was involved with the happiness or suffering of multitudes of youthful persons who die without telling their secret: 

How many young men have a mortal fear of woman, as woman, which they never overcome, and in consequence of which the attraction which draws man towards her, as strong in them as in others,—­oftentimes, in virtue of their peculiarly sensitive organizations, more potent in them than in others of like age and conditions,—­in consequence of which fear, this attraction is completely neutralized, and all the possibilities of doubled and indefinitely extended life depending upon it are left unrealized!  Think what numbers of young men in Catholic countries devote themselves to lives of celibacy.  Think how many young men lose all their confidence in the presence of the young woman to whom they are most attracted, and at last steal away from a companionship which it is rapture to dream of and torture to endure, so does the presence of the beloved object paralyze all the powers of expression.  Sorcerers have in all time and countries played on the hopes and terrors of lovers.  Once let loose a strong impulse on the centre of inhibition, and the warrior who had faced bayonets and batteries becomes a coward whom the well-dressed hero of the ball-room and leader of the German will put to ignominious flight in five minutes of easy, audacious familiarity with his lady-love.

Yes, the doctor went on with his reflections, I do not know that I have seen the term Gynophobia before I opened this manuscript, but I have seen the malady many times.  Only one word has stood between many a pair of young people and their lifelong happiness, and that word has got as far as the lips, but the lips trembled and would not, could not, shape that little word.  All young women are not like Coleridge’s Genevieve, who knew how to help her lover out of his difficulty, and said yes before he had asked for an answer.  So the wave which was to have wafted them on to the shore of Elysium has just failed of landing them, and back they have been drawn into the desolate ocean to meet no more on earth.