"When you say that it would not make any—well, not much—difference in your feelings towards me if I did not care for you in return, I wonder if you are not indulging in a state of mind peculiar to poetic temperaments such as yours, my dearest, and I feel jealous."
"Dear child—jealous of whom?"
"Cannot you guess? Why, of Love itself. I believe you are so happy in having me to care for, simply because you delight in loving. You are a worshipper of love in the abstract; you fairly glory in that frame of mind people call 'being in love.' The possession of the emotion means more to you than the possession of any particular woman. There are some terrible people like that. They would rather their mistress died than that she should destroy the love she had awakened in their hearts."
"Now, fair Diotima, just please name one single individual who ever felt that way."
"Easily! What about Dante, the patron saint of such sinners? Do you suppose he could have had any ordinary personal affection for his precious Beatrice? Why, he only saw her twice, or something of that sort, and she was respectably married to somebody else, yet she coloured his whole life, and he seems to have been quite contented. And he is never without disciples—a few. Oh, I know you—people who are in love with Love itself."
"Yes? Go on telling me about them."
Interested though he was in her slightest word, Geoffrey, man-like, was not giving all his mind to Evarne's ideas. He was enthralled by the contemplation of her sinuous, supple form, her tenderly waving hair and satin-smooth skin, and the live beams of her glancing eye; he was glorying in the dulcet music of her voice.
"Well," she went on, feigning discontent, while her very heart seemed pulsating in notes of perfect happiness—"well, you find some woman whom you can idealise and adore, and if she be but passably gracious to you, you proceed to make a world of happiness for yourselves merely from loving her, dreaming of her, writing poems to her or painting pictures that you think she has inspired—though really it is nothing but your own capacity for loving that she has made active that is the true source of your inspiration. Even if you rarely see her it seems to make very little difference—you still dream, still find inspirations, still do great work under the divine influence of Aphrodite. You live in the enchanted Palace of Love, and once safely there, are horribly independent of the woman who opened its magic portals to you. Oh, sorry fate that led me to love an artist! So long as I condescend to exist and remain tolerably young and beautiful, all is well. I cannot possibly feel that your entire happiness depends upon my presence or my absence, my smile or my frown. Now do you see my grievance?"
"I can't believe you know it, but you actually seem to imply that you care for me more sincerely, more humanly, than I do for you, which is obviously impossible."
"I don't see the 'obviousness.' I should rather like to."