“In the change of years, in the coil of things,
In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
Covered with love as a covering tree,
We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
Held fast in his arms, clothed warm with his wings,
O love, my love, had you loved but me!
“We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved
As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen
Grief collapse as a thing disproved,
Death consume as a thing unclean.
Twin halves of a perfect heart, made fast
Soul to soul while the years fell past;
Had you loved me once, as you have not loved;
Had the chance been with us that has not been.”
The slow tears gathered in her eyes, and forcing themselves forward fell down her cheeks.
Then there was, after all, something to be said for feelings which had not their basis in material relationships. They were not mere phantasmagoria conjured up by silly people, by sentimental people, by women. Clever men, men of distinction, recognized them, treated them as of paramount importance.
The practical, if not the theoretical, teaching of her life had been to treat as absurd any close or strong feeling which had not its foundations in material interests. There must be no undue giving away of one’s self in friendship, in the pursuit of ideas, in charity, in a public cause. Only gushing fools did that sort of thing, and their folly generally met with its reward.
And this teaching, sensible enough in its way, had been accepted without question by the clannish, exclusive, conservative soul of Judith.
Where your interests lie, there should lie your duties; and where your duties, your feelings. A wholesome doctrine no doubt, if not one that will always meet the far-reaching and complicated needs of a human soul.
And if this doctrine applied to friendship, to philanthropy, to art and politics, in how much greater a degree must it apply to love, to the unspoken, unacknowledged love between a man and woman; a thing in its very essence immaterial, and which, in its nature, can have no rights, no duties attached to it?
It was the very hatred of the position into which she had been forced, the very loathing of what was so alien to her whole way of life and mode of thought that was giving Judith courage; if she could not vindicate herself, she must be simply crushed beneath the load of shame.
On one point, the nature and extent of her feeling for Reuben, there could no longer be illusion or self-deception; she would have walked to the stake for him without a murmur, and she knew it.