A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and these findings about the penetralia of sexual life gave the writer a sort of justification for a native acerbity. Afterwards, when love left him in the lurch and he became the wounded man who was such a trial to us all, he took refuge in a laughter and cynicism which were far from his real nature - a secretive one. He had at last discovered that love had no pith in it, and that the projection of one's own feelings upon the image of a beloved was in the long run an act of self-mutilation.