"It is perfectly certain," and Verisschenzko grew contemplative, "that the result of deliberately turning the current of events like that must have some momentous consequence. Mind you, I think you were right. I should have advised it as I have told you, because of that swine of a Turk, Ferdinand—but it may have deranged some plan of the Cosmos, and if so some of you will have to pay for it. I hate that it should be my lady Amaryllis. All her sorrow comes from your dramatically honourable promise. You can't make love to her now—because a man who is a gentleman does not break his word. Now if my plan had been followed, you would not have had this limitation and you could have had some joy—but who knows! A false position is a gall in any case, and it would have soiled my star, which now shines purely. So perhaps all is for the best. But have you analysed, now that we are on the subject, what it is 'being in love,' old boy?"
"It is divine—and it is hell—"
"All that! Amaryllis is the exact opposite to Harietta Boleski—in this, that she attracts as strongly as Harietta could ever do physically, and will be no disappointment in soul in the entre actes. Being in love is a physical state of exaltation; loving is the merging of spirit which in its white heat has glorified the physical instinct for re-creation into a godlike beatitude not of earth. A man could be in love with Harietta, he could never love her. A man could always love Amaryllis, so much that he would not be aware that half his joy was because he was in love with her also."
"You know, Stépan, men, women and every one talk a lot of nonsense about other interests in life mattering more, and there being other kinds of really better happiness, but it is pure rot; if one is honest one owns that there is no real happiness but in the satisfaction of love. Every other kind is second best. It is jolly good often, but only a pis aller in comparison to the real thing.
"And when people deny this, believing they are speaking honestly, it is simply because the real thing has not come their way, or they are too brutalised by transient indulgences to be able to feel exaltation.
"So here's to love!" and Denzil emptied his glass. "The supreme God—"
"Ainsi soit il," and Stépan drank in response. "Our toast before has always been to the Ardayre son, and now we drink to what I hope has been his creator!"
They were silent for some moments, and then Verisschenzko went on:
"When the state of being in love is waning, affection often remains, but then one is at the mercy of a new emotion. I'd be nervous if a woman who had loved me subsided into feeling affection!"
"Then define loving?"