Caresses by Guy De Maupassant — Read

No, my friend, do not think any more of it. What you ask of me revolts and disgusts me. It is as if God -- for I believe in God -- had wanted to spoil every good thing that He made by attaching some horrible thing to it. He had given us love, the divinest thing the world ever knew, but, finding it too lovely and too fine for us, He imagined our senses, shameful, vile, revolting, brutal senses, senses that He seems to have fashioned in malicious jest and linked with the excretions of our bodies; He has conceived them in such a way that we cannot think of it without blushing, can only speak of it in hushed voices. The dreadful thing they do is wrapped in shame. It hides away, disgusts our souls, offends our eyes; despised by morality, hounded down by law, it consummates itself in darkness, as if it were a criminal. / Never speak to me of it, never! / I do not know whether I love you, but I know that your nearness pleases me, that your glance is sweet to me and your voice caresses my heart. From the day you had of me the frailness you desire, you would become hateful to me. The delicate bond that holds us to each other would be broken. An infamous abyss would lie between us. / Let us stay as we are. And. love me if you will, I will let you. / Your friend, / Geneviève

Madame, will you allow me also to speak to you with brutal frankness, without polite euphemisms, as I would speak to a friend who was anxious to take on himself a lifelong vow? / Neither do I know whether I love you. I should be sure of it only after the thing that so revolts you. / Have you forgotten Musset's poem: