Impatience of the Heart

by Stefan Zweig

But what is truly disastrous is when Fate turns the scales, when the woman has so overcome her instinctive reserve as to reveal her own passionate commitment to the man, and with no certainty that it will be returned tenders her love, while he, now the courted one, remains reluctant and cold! This kind of entanglement is indeed insoluble, because not to respond to a woman’s desire is to crush her pride and undermine her modesty; the man who rejects a woman’s desires destroys what is most precious of all in her. Any attempt to be sensitive in his withdrawal will be in vain, any delicately evasive words useless, any offer of mere friendship a further injury to a woman who has once compromised herself and betrayed her weakness – every rejection dealt by a man becomes irredeemably a cruelty; by refusing the overture of love, he incurs guilt, guiltless though he may be. A dreadful, permanent fettering – just when you thought you were free, and felt you were your own master and indebted to no one, suddenly you find yourself hunted and surrounded, the targeted prey of someone else’s unwanted cravings. You are aware – and you feel the pain of it in the depths of your soul – that someone is waiting, waiting for you night and day, thinking about you, longing for you in agony, a woman, a stranger to you! She wants you, demands you with her whole being, every atom of her body. She desires your hands, your hair, your lips, your body, your night and your day, all of your feelings and yo...