“Daphne, I love thee as never yet man loved woman. Against my will, against my belief, in a moment, love has seized me—love as strong and irrevocable as death that, too, comes in a moment.”
Then he advanced towards her, and seizing her hand, kissed it passionately. He tried to embrace her, but she drew back, afraid. The change in the man was too sudden and unexpected. She knew not what to think. Delight was mingled with distrust, and she knew not which would gain the victory. His kisses inflamed her heart, but the horror of the past was too recent to be altogether forgotten.
She longed to be alone, and yet, at the same time, she wished to ask Thoth a multitude of questions. She wished to know his whole nature, and as yet she was afraid to give him her finger-tip. Overpowered by the conflict of emotions, she sank down on the couch, and listened to Thoth as if in a dream.
Thoth respected her diffidence, and for a time reason again seemed to take command of his nature, and he spoke calmly even of his new-born passion. The words of love which she had spoken to him, and which, at first, had made no impression, had, he related, as soon as he left her, begun to recur to him as if she were still present.
He was quite frank. He told her that he had ordered her imprisonment, and had even tried to think of the details of her punishment; but in spite of his strongest efforts, whenever he thought of her he recalled her passionate appeal of love. At first he was astonished and bewildered—the whole affair seemed to him incredible and ridiculous. But the memory of her grasp made his hand burn, and her beautiful face chased away every thought. Then came her message, and he felt drawn by an irresistible force to see her. It seemed to him as if hitherto he had lived in a dream, and had only just awaked to the reality of life.
Again and again he described to her the revolution in his nature,—by endless comparisons sought to show her how sudden and complete it had been. His love was the sun banishing night, and hiding the stars from the cold contemplation of the astronomer. It was the sudden rebound of a tall young palm which had been bent to the earth with thongs. It was a storm of burning sand, effacing alike the road before and behind. It was the cleaving by an earthquake of the solid ground, swallowing up in a moment man’s handiwork for ages. It was the tree which blossomed once in a thousand years, the first flight of a bird released from captivity, the first living prey of the young lion.
Then after he had exhausted language and imagination in portraying the degree and violence of his passion, the natural bent of his mind made him seek for an explanation which would make the unreasonable reasonable, and the ludicrous full of dignity and pathos. He proved to Daphne that life is not truly in the individual but in the race: his race was a giant whose nature had been distorted for a long period, and then suddenly had asserted its strength. The loveless lives of his predecessors had, by a necessary reaction, made him capable of an infinite depth of passion. Love, instead of being stamped out and crushed, as the first Thoth had supposed, had only been stored up from generation to generation. It was a transcendent passion, which did not obey the ordinary laws of life and descent. It was part of the very nature of life, and could only be destroyed by death. Besides this, his mother was by birth a child of the instincts and passions common to the races of mankind.
The search for reasons brought back Thoth, as far as was possible, to his former calmness of demeanour, and he began to talk of the future. He assumed all the time that the declaration of his passion was all that Daphne had required of him, and she had been too much overcome by surprise to interrupt the torrent of his eloquence.
When, however, he spoke in a definite manner of their union in a short time, she was driven to take up an attitude of defence. Much as Thoth had advanced in her esteem, she could not at once respond to his passion, and she was troubled by painful reminiscences. She said to him—
“Tell me one thing in all sincerity. Wilt thou still, if I wish it, send me back to Greece?”