"For God's sake, what do you mean?"
"It's news to you? I do think it is! And it has come the same way to many when it falls the first time. The deeper it strikes, the less they can put a name to it. But now you know. Glance back along the road you've walked beside Honor of late days. Then see how the way ahead looks to you with her figure gone. I knew this a week ago, and I sorrowed for you. There was an unconscious tribute in your voice when you spoke to her—a hush in it, as if you were praying. Man, I'm sorry—but your heart will tell you that I'm right."
A lengthy silence followed upon this speech; then the other whispered out a question, and there was awe rather than terror in his tone.
"You mean I'm coming to love her?"
"I do—if only that. Remember what you said the first day you came here about the false step at the threshold."
"But she is another man's. That has been familiar knowledge to me."
"And you think that fact can prevent a man of honour from loving a woman?"
"Surely."
"Not so at all. Love of woman's a thing apart—beyond all rule and scale, or dogma, or the Bible's self. The passions are pagans to the end—no more to be trusted than tame tigers, if a man is a man. But passions are bred out nowadays. I don't believe the next generation will be shook to the heart with the same gusts and storms as the last. We think smaller thoughts and feel smaller sentiments; we're too careful of our skins to trust the giant passions; our hearts don't pump the same great flood of hot blood. But you—you belong to the older sort. And you love her—you who never heard the rustle of a petticoat with quickened breath before, I reckon. You're too honest to deny it after you've thought a little. You know there's something seething down at the bottom of your soul—and now you hear the name of it. Go to bed and sleep upon that."
Stapledon remained mute. His face was passive, but his forehead was wrinkled a little. He folded his arms and stared at the fire.