"Sit down and let us talk about it, lady of my soul. I am your mother now."
She sank into her seat beside him, among the green silk pillows—and he leaned back and watched her for a while.
"He fulfils some imaginary picture, hein? You had not seen him really until we all dined?"
"No."
"You were bound to be drawn to him—he is everything a woman could desire—but it was not only that—tell me?"
"He was what I had hoped John would be—the likeness is so great—"
"It is much deeper than that—nature was drawing you unconsciously."
She covered her face with her hands. It seemed as if Verisschenzko must know the truth. Had Denzil told him, or was it his wonderful intuition which was enlightening him now, or was it just her sensitive conscience?
"You see custom and convention and false shames have so distorted most natural things that no one has been taught to understand them. Men were intended in the scheme of things to love women and to have children; women were meant to love men and to desire to be mothers. These instincts are primordial, the life of the world depends upon them. They have been distorted and abused into sins and vices and excesses and every evil by civilisation, so that now we rule them out of every calculation in judging of a circumstance; if we are 'nice' people they are taboo. Supposing we so suppressed and distorted and misused the other two primitive instincts, to obtain food and to kill one's enemy, the world would have ended long ago. We have done what we could to distort those also, but nothing to the extent to which we have debased the nobility of the recreative instinct!"
Amaryllis listened attentively, and he went on: