“It is strong—too strong, I should fancy, for a bridegroom.”
“More knowledge of love than a bachelor had a right to have—is that what you mean?” inquired Perdita, arching her brows.
“There is such a thing as understanding a passion too clearly to feel it,” Fillmore answered. “You may take up a matter either intellectually or emotionally, but you will seldom be equally strong in both directions.”
“But the pleasure of emotion is only in feeling. It is blind. Intellect is sight. Sight often makes sensation more pleasurable.”
“A man who is in love, madame, wishes to do something more than to enjoy his own sensations; he wishes to have them shared by the lady of his choice. To insure that he must, at least, love with all his strength. And, as a matter of experience, there is little evidence to show that the best poets of love have also been the best lovers. They filter their hearts through their heads, so to speak; they imagine more than they can personally realize. There is Byron, for instance—”
“Yes; I saw him in Italy: he is an actor, who always plays one rôle—Byron! But he is not like others. A poet of love ... if he is not a good lover, it may be because he never happens to meet a woman lovable enough. But when he does meet her ... it would be heaven for them both!” The Marquise seldom spoke with so much fervor and earnestness.
Fillmore looked at her intently, and his ordinarily unimpassioned face slowly reddened. He pressed one clenched hand strongly into the palm of the other.
“I have one argument,” he said, “to prove that poets are not the best lovers.”
“Arguments don’t always convince me. What is it?”
“I am no poet myself.”