"You are not so foolish as to call that love! That is mere unreasoning and degraded habit—the same kind of thing one may find in a dog."
"Has love anything to do with reason, Reuben?"
"As I understand it, it has everything to do with reason. Animal passion has not, of course; but love is made of that with something added. Can my reason discover any argument why I should not love you? I won't say that it might not, some day, and then my love would by so much be diminished."
"You believe that reason is free to exercise itself, where love is in possession?"
"I believe that love can only come when reason invites. Of course, we are talking of love between men and women; the word has so many senses. In this highest sense, it is one of the rarest of things. How many wives and husbands love each other? Not one pair in five thousand. In the average pair that have lived together as long as we have, there is not only mutual criticism, but something even of mutual dislike. That makes love impossible. Habit takes its place."
"Happily for the world."
"I don't know. Perhaps so. It is an ignoble necessity; but then, the world largely consists of ignoble creatures."
Cecily reflected often on this conversation. Was there any significance in such reasonings? It gave her keen pleasure to hear Reuben maintain such a view, but did it mean anything? If, in meditating about him, she discovered characteristics of his which she could have wished to change, which in themselves were certainly not lovable, had she in that moment ceased to love him, in love's highest sense?
But in that case love might be self-deception. In that case, perfect love was impossible save as a result of perfect knowledge.
What part had reason in the impulses which possessed her from her first meeting with Reuben in Italy, unless that name were given to the working of mysterious affinities, afterwards to be justified by experience?