There had been a time when I would have consolidated the understanding between us by taking, on the first dawn of liberty, our friendship to church. In those days, indeed, I even hinted as much to him, touching upon the duty he owed me so to establish my innocence with the world. Then he would fall back upon his cant of Nature; of vows dishonoured in her sight; of laws that crossed the plainest mandate that ever she had given to earth. And I must be content at the time, because we were helpless outcasts together, because he was kind to me, because he flattered me with a thousand attentions which made me forget the equivocalness of my position.
But now, at the last, it was he must sue and I be cold. For, under our altered relations, I had come to recognise, though late, how wrong was this continued communion, however platonic, between us. It was not that I loved my brother less, but that I respected myself more. I had been blinded by all the novelty and glamour. He was pagan at heart, I saw, and I was at heart religious. My thoughts turned with affection to the quiet nunnery at Wellcot. I longed to see my kind again, to recover something of the world I had lost. I had no real faith in his protestations, no real belief that, should it ever chance to him to recover his rights—which, in truth, seemed impossible—he would claim me to my legitimate share in them. And I found no room in my world for a paradise of sinful loves.
He sighed much, and was very pathetic, poor fellow, over my changed attitude, and wearied me to death. Then he took to verse, and depressed me more. He had a strange faculty for a sort of big-sounding line, which he would invent and declaim in his odd moments while engaged over mending his snares or sewing buttons on his gaiters. It was quite impressive in its place, but was not exhilarating when applied to les amours.
“This world” (he declared once) “is but the weed-heap of the spheres,
Whereon we rot and fester, torn from the skies,
And are consumed in fire, to manure
And quicken old fields of heaven with new love.
O, sweet! wind with me on the damnéd pile,
So of our mingled dust shall blossom heaven”—
A romantic use to put your poor little Diana to, eh, my friend? But, indeed, I would have none of it. I hate that fashion of decrying the flesh, because your poet has a stomachache. My body is the only certain God I know in the midst of these shadows. I cling to it, worshipping it with all the pretty gifts I can think. When it goes, where shall I be? Seeking and crying for it again through space. I will not have it abused to such uses, my sweet body that I love so.