'You have a singularly direct way of putting things,' observed Orsino, thoughtfully.
'That is simply the result of your eliminations,' answered the priest. 'If you do not love her enough to take her in spite of everything and everybody, you must restore into the list of possibilities the certainty that before long you will not love her at all. For I conceive that half a love is no better as a basis of warfare than half a faith. I do not mean to breed war with our father and mother. That is a serious matter. I am only pursuing the matter to its logical conclusion and end, in words, as you will have to do in your acts, sooner or later.'
'Meanwhile I am doing nothing,' said Orsino. 'And I am horribly conscious that I am doing nothing.'
'You are going away,' remarked Ippolito. 'That is not inaction.'
'It is worse than inaction—it is far worse than doing nothing at all.'
'I am not so sure of that. It is sometimes a good thing to force an interval between events. In the first place, I often hear it said that a separation strengthens a great passion, but destroys a small one. All passions seem great when the object is present, but distance brings out the truth. By the time you have been a month at Camaldoli you will know whether it is essential to your happiness to marry Vittoria d'Oriani, or not.'
'And suppose that it is? We come back to the same situation again.'
'Yes—we come back to the eternal situation of force against force.'
'And you mean that I should use force? That is—that I should marry her and take all the consequences, no matter what they may be?'