“I loved Mabel; there can be no doubt of that. I suppose that the long root of such love is the axis of life. It permits millions to marry every day that have little or no prospect of educating or even supporting possible offspring; but if they paused to forecast, in other words, if their brains were not in a state of toxic poisoning from this love secretion, whatever it may be, the race would soon put an end to itself. Perhaps in time the law will step in and forbid marriages before the man is thirty and the woman twenty-five. As for the turbulence of desire and suffering—after one has endured the acute stage for a certain length of time, there is bound to be a decline and reaction. Man simply cannot suffer and desire at concert pitch forever. Moreover, did the law forbid the banns, a man would take jolly good care to keep out of harm’s way. But I know now that even had Mabel been all they made me believe, all that she looked, I should have ceased to care tuppence for her, although no doubt rather later. It is not necessary to explain the reason to you. A man may love many times in his life, but only one woman takes full and complete possession of his inner kingdom, as you have called it. Man is a sultan. One woman is his sultana; the others, absorbing enough during their little hour, are the caprices of his desultory harem. It is odd that his legal wife should so often be but one of these casual minor passions, and the woman he may never possess the one to persuade him of the immortality of love. It is a nice comment upon the makeshifts of civilization.”
Styr stirred uneasily. She was white, for the story had cut her even more deeply than she had anticipated. It is not pleasant to hear your chosen idol draw a picture of his youthful passion, his first abandon for another woman. She had clenched her long hands, and a blast from the furnace of her soul sped in the direction of Grosvenor Square. But she answered judicially: “The first study of civilized nations is every possible precaution against anarchy. They are doing their little best; we can only wait until the world grows wiser.” Then she laughed with a fair assumption of gayety. “It is something more than humorous that I should be the one to say that, not you: I, Margarethe Styr, and you, John Ordham, so soon to be a hereditary legislator of the most wisely governed country on earth. Well! Never mind! I have played many rôles in my life.”
“Will you not tell me that story now?” he asked eagerly. “You have half promised, more than once. And I am sick of outrageous concoctions. The truth could not be worse.”
“The truth is always worse, when there is any foundation for gossip at all. No!” she said violently, her voice harsh with the revolt let loose by his own story. “I will never tell you. It is only because I have lived so much, suffered so much, weathered a thousand storms, that I have been able to listen to all you have told me to-night without hating you. Were it otherwise, were I ten years younger, it would be months before I should want even to look at you again. You could never stand a similar—a far worse test. This life may not be for us, but at all events you shall never hear from my lips what would make you—Ah! Bah!”
“Do you believe in another life?” he asked, tactfully ignoring this outburst, in which he secretly exulted.
“This inner life of ours does not undergo death and resurrection for nothing,” she replied sullenly. “Nor is imagination a mere offshoot of the active mind. If it means anything, it means that somewhere, in some future incarnation, or on some more satisfactory planet, its supernormal efforts will become the facts of existence. And what then? Still subtler and more imperative wants that can only be realized in a higher state still? It makes one incline to Buddhism and Nirvana.”
“Either way of looking at it is a poor compensation for the disappointments of this life, when you are young, at least; and when you are old, you don’t care. The trouble is with civilization. We need a new religion. Perhaps the solution is in a combination of the Eastern and Western forms. It is as significant that Christianity has converted but one-third of the Earth’s peoples as that the remaining two-thirds are an anomaly in this eve of the twentieth century. The last are too supercilious in their ancient wisdom to borrow anything from us. We are raw conceited schoolboys, too ignorant, and worse, to help ourselves from their abundant stores. Perhaps the time will come.”
Margarethe suppressed her feminine resentment at generalities in the twilight. “Well, that may be one of your many missions. But it was not a personal craving alone that made me demand the history of these last ten months. It is an immense relief to me to know that your eyes are opened, that you are no longer blinded by either love or cunning. I have a strong suspicion, and so has Excellenz, that they do not intend you shall go abroad. I have heard since my arrival of your wife’s consuming ambition to be a beauty in London, of her detestation of Continental life, the third, or fourth, fiddle she would be forced to play for many years. They will keep you here if they can.”
“I have heard nothing of all this, but I shouldn’t wonder—and it makes no difference. As soon as my wife is able to travel, I go to whatever post is open to me. I should go the day you left London had I not given my word to remain here until September or thereabouts.”
“And what if she refuses to go with you?”