“But it isn’t war, you dear, if that’s what you mean. I’m only doing for them what they are naturally loth to do for themselves.” She pronounced the word “loth” as if it rimed with moth.
“Lizzie,” he said, “I’m sure about Lizzie. I’ll swear there is still some fondness in her funny little heart.”
“It isn’t love, though; she’s just sentimental in her puffy kind of way. My dear Honourable, you don’t know what love is.” He hated her to use his title, for there was then always a breath of scorn in her tone. Just at odd times she seemed to be—not vulgar, that was unthinkable—she seemed to display a contempt for good breeding. He asked with a stiff smile “What is love?”
“For me,” said Orianda, fumbling for a definition, “for me it is a compound of anticipation and gratitude. When either of these two ingredients is absent love is dead.”
Gerald shook his head, laughing. “It sounds like a malignant bolus that I shouldn’t like to take. I feel that love is just self-sacrifice. Apart from the taste of the thing or the price of the thing, why and for what this anticipation, this gratitude?
“For the moment of passion, of course. Honour thy moments of passion and keep them holy. But O, Gerald Loughlin,” she added mockingly, “this you cannot understand, for you are not a lover; you are not, no, you are not even a good swimmer.” Her mockery was adorable, but baffling.
“I do not understand you,” he said. Now why in the whole world of images should she refer to his swimming? He was a good swimmer. He was silent for a long time and then again he began to speak of marriage, urging her to give up her project and leave Lizzie in her simple peace.
Then, not for the first time, she burst into a strange perverse intensity that may have been love but might have been rage, that was toned like scorn and yet must have been a jest.
“Lovely Gerald, you must never marry, Gerald, you are too good for marriage. All the best women are already married, yes, they are—to all the worst men.” There was an infinite slow caress in her tone but she went on rapidly. “So I shall never marry you, how should I marry a kind man, a good man? I am a barbarian, and want a barbarian lover, to crush and scarify me, but you are so tender and I am so crude. When your soft eyes look on me they look on a volcano.”
“I have never known anything half as lovely,” he broke in.