But what is love anyway? the thing itself I mean. It is a want, and an ache and a craving—I know what I want. I want firstly Alathea for my own, with everything which that term implies of possession. Then I want to share her thoughts, and I want to feel all the great aspirations of her soul—I want her companionship—I want her sympathy—I want her understanding.
When I was in love with Nina—and five or six others—I never thought of any of these things—I just wanted their bodies: Therefore it is only when the spiritual enters into the damned thing, I suppose, that one could call it love. By that reasoning I have loved only Alathea in all my life. But I am stumped with this thought—If she had one eye and no leg below the knee—should I be in love with her? and feel all these exalted emotions about her? I cannot honestly be certain how I would answer that question yet, so this shows that the physical plays the chief rôle even in a love that seems spiritual.
Matho—in Flaubert's Salammbô was beaten to a jelly but his eyes still flamed with love for his princess—But when she saw him as this revolting mass, did her love flame for him? Or was she exalted only by the incense to her vanity—and a pity for his sufferings? Heloise and Abelard were pretty wonderful in their love, but his love became transmuted much sooner than hers, because all physical emotions were gone from him. Plato's idea that man gravitates towards beauty for some subconscious soul desire to re-create himself through perfection, and so attain immortality, is probably the truth. And that is why we shrink from mutilated bodies—. Until I can be quite sure that I should love Alathea just the same were she disfigured as I am—I cannot in justice expect her to return my passion—.
Nina became re-attracted (if I can coin that word)—because I was out of reach. The predatory instinct in woman had received a rebuff, and demanded renewed advance.—She still keeps a picture in some part of her mental vision of what I was too, therefore, I am not so revolting to her—but Alathea has not this advantage, and has seen me only wounded.
I have done nothing to earn her respect—She has apprehended my useless life in these last months—She has heard the chattering of my companions, whom I have been free to choose—the obvious deduction being that these are what I desire—And finally, she knows that I have had a mistress.—In heaven's name why should she be anything but what she is in her manner to me!—Of course she despises me. So that the only thing I could possibly allure her by would be that intangible something which Nina and Suzette and even Coralie—have inferred that I possess—"It"!!—. And how would that translate itself to a mind like Alathea's?—It might mean nothing to her—It probably would not. The only times I have ever seen any feeling at all in her for me were when she thought she had destroyed a wounded man's interest in a harmless hobby—and felt remorse—And the freezing reserve which showed when she handed me the cheque-book—and the perturbation and contempt when I was rude about the child.—At other times she has shown a blank indifference—or a momentary consciousness that there was admiration in my eye for her.
Now what do I get out of the iciness over Suzette's cheque?
Two possibilities—.
One—that she is more prudish than one of her literary cultivation, and worldly knowledge is likely to be, so that she strongly disapproves of a man having a "petite amie"—or—
Two—that she has sensed that I love her and was affronted at the discovery that at the same time I had a—friend?—
The second possibility gives me hope, and so I fear to entertain a belief in it—but taken coldly it seems the most likely.—Now if she had not been affronted at this stage, would she have gone on believing I loved her, and so eventually have shown some reciprocity?