"Just so; the King never dies. Les roix meurent-ils? Quelquefois, madame. Alas, theory and fact conflict. Love is eternal in the abstract; but nothing is more mortal than a particular love," said Cleve.
"If you think so, I wonder you ever wished to marry," said Margaret, and a faint tinge flushed her cheeks.
"I thought so, and yet I did wish to marry," said Cleve. "It is perishable, but I can't live without it," and he patted her cheek, and laughed a rather cold little laugh.
"No, love never dies," said Margaret, with a gleam of her old fierce spirit. "But it may be killed."
"It is terrible to kill anything," said Cleve.
"To kill love," she answered, "is the worst murder of all."
"A veritable murder," he acquiesced, with a smile and a slight shrug; "once killed, it never revives."
"You like talking awfully, as if I might lose your love," said she, haughtily; "as if, were I to vex you, you never could forgive."
"Forgiveness has nothing to do with it, my poor little woman. I no more called my love into being than I did myself; and should it die, either naturally or violently, I could no more call it to life, than I could Cleopatra or Napoleon Bonaparte. It is a principle, don't you see? that comes as direct as life from heaven. We can't create it, we can't restore it; and really about love, it is worse than mortal, because, as I said, I am sure it has no resurrection—no, it has no resurrection."
"That seems to me a reason," she said, fixing her large eyes upon him with a wild resentment, "why you should cherish it very much while it lives."