"Loving throbs with delight in the flesh; it thrills the spirit with reverence. It glorifies into beauty commonplace things. It draws nearer in sickness and sorrow, and is not the sport of change. When a woman loves truly she has the passion of the mistress, the selfless tenderness of the mother, the dignity and devotion of the wife. She is all fire and snow, all will and frankness, all passion and reserve, she is authoritative and obedient—queen and child."
"And a man?"
"He ceases to be a brute and becomes a god."
"Can it last, I wonder?" and again Denzil sighed.
"It could if people were not such fools—they nearly always deliberately destroy the loved one's emotion by senseless stupidity—in not grasping the fact that no fire burns without fuel. They disillusionise each other. The joy once secured, they take no pains to keep it. A woman will do things when the lover is an acknowledged possession, which she would not have dreamed of doing while desiring to attract the man—and a man likewise—neither realising that the whole state of being in love is an intoxication of the senses, and that the senses are very easily wearied or affronted."
"Stépan—what am I going to do about Amaryllis? If I come back, it will be hell—a continual longing and aching, and I want to accomplish something in life; it was never my plan to have the whole thing held and bounded by passion for a woman. A hopeless passion I can understand facing and crushing, but one which you know that the woman returns, and that it is only the law and promises you have made which separate you, is the most awful torment." He covered his eyes with his hand for a moment. His face was stern. "And her life too—how sickening. You say you are going down to Ardayre to see Amaryllis—you will tell me how you find her. I have not written—I am trying not to feel."
"Are you interested about the coming child? I am never quite certain how much it matters to a man, whether we deceive ourselves and feel sentiment simply because we love the woman, whether the emotion is half vanity, or whether there is something in the actual state called parenthood? How do you feel?"
Denzil thought of his musings upon this subject after he had seen
Amaryllis at the Carlton.
"It is hard to describe," he answered now, "it is all so interwoven with love for Amaryllis that I cannot distinguish which is which, or how I feel about the state in the abstract. Women have these mysterious emotions, I believe, but I do not think that they come to the average man, but if he loves it seems a fulfilment."
"I have two children scattered in Russia, begotten before I had begun to think of things and their meanings. I have them finely educated—I loathe them. I sicken at the memory of the mothers; I am ashamed when I see in them some chance physical likeness to myself. But how will you feel presently when you see the child, adoring the mother as you do? What will it say to you, looking at you with your own eyes, perhaps? You'll long to have some hand in the training of it. You'll desire to watch the budding brain and the expanding soul. You'll be drawn closer and closer to Amaryllis—it will all pull you with an invisible nature chain—"