“I can’t imagine stopping my work for any woman,” said Mendel.
“Ah! that’s because you don’t know what a woman can mean. You can’t know while you are young.”
Mendel’s nerves had been throbbing in sympathy with his friend, but suddenly all that place was filled with a soft, clear light and a bright music, the colour and the scent of flowers, the soft murmur of flowing water, the whisper of the wind in leafy trees, and his heart ached and grew big and seemed to burst into a thousand, thousand rivulets of love, searching out every corner of his senses, cleansing his eyes, sharpening his hearing, refining every sense, so that the scene before him—the white tables, the white-aproned waiters, the green trees, the soft evening sky, the softer reflection of it in the water—was exquisite and magical and full of a mysterious power that permeated even Logan’s brutal revelation and made it worthy of beauty. . . . And this mysterious power he knew was love, and she, the girl for whom it had arisen from the depths, was far away in England, thinking of him, perhaps, regretting him, perhaps, but knowing nothing of the beauty she had denied. . . .
Mendel was astonished to find tears in his eyes, trembling on his lashes, trickling down his cheeks.
“What a baby you are!” said Logan. “You can’t have me all to yourself.”
His divination was true. Lacking its true object, Mendel’s love had concentrated upon his friend, with whom he longed to walk freely in the enchanted world of art, to be as David and Jonathan. Indeed, Logan’s state of torment was to him as a wound got in battle, over which he gave himself up to lamentation, so single and deep and pure that it obscured even the impulse of his love. He longed to rid his friend of this devouring passion that was consuming him and thrusting in upon his energy, but because his friend called it love, he respected it and bore with it.
“How good it is, this life out of doors!” exclaimed Logan, lolling back in his chair.
“I don’t know,” replied Mendel. “I think it is too deliberate, too organized. I prefer London streets. There is nothing in the world to me to compare with London streets. Nature is too beautiful. A tree in blossom, a garden full of flowers, a round hill with the shadow of the clouds over them, move me too much. Left alone with them I should go mad. I must have human nature if I am to live and work. I only want nature, just as I only want God, through human nature.”
“By Jove! you hit the nail on the head sometimes, my boy. That is true for all of us. It is what I meant when I said that Oliver was a religion to me.”
“I don’t mean women or individuals,” protested Mendel. “I mean human nature in the lump. It may be very poor stuff, stupid and foolish and vulgar, but it is all we’ve got, and one lives in it and through it.”