“What sort of men do you mean? I, dear lady, have from my childhood looked up to woman as a higher manifestation of the species man, and from the day on which I fell in love with a woman, and she returned my love, I should be her slave.”
Adeline looked at him long and searchingly.
“You are a remarkable man,” she said, after a pause.
After each of the two had declared the other to be a remarkable specimen of the species man, and made a good many remarks on the futility of dancing, they began to talk of the melancholy influence of the moon. Then they returned to the ball-room and took their place in a set of quadrilles.
Adeline was a perfect dancer and the lawyer won her heart completely because he “danced like an innocent girl.”
When the set was over, they went out again on the verandah and sat down.
“What is love?” asked Adeline, looking at the moon as if she expected an answer from heaven.
“The sympathy of the souls,” he replied, and his voice sounded like the whispering breeze.
“But sympathy may turn to antipathy; it has happened frequently,” objected Adeline.
“Then it wasn’t genuine! There are materialists who say that there would be no such thing as love if there weren’t two sexes, and they dare to maintain that sensual love is more lasting than the love of the soul. Don’t you think it low and bestial to see nothing but sex in the beloved woman?”