He said it almost shyly, as though it were something abnormal, that general love, of which he ought to be ashamed before her.
"A great love," he explained once more, when she continued to look at him in silence; and he made an embracing gesture with his arms, "for our people...."
"Do you really feel that?" she asked, in surprise.
"Yes...."
A sort of vista opened out before her, as though an horizon of light were dawning right at the end of her dark melancholy; but that horizon was so far, so very far away....
"But, Othomar," she said, "that is very good. It is very beautiful to feel like that!"
He shrugged his shoulders:
"Beautiful? How do you mean? I cannot but feel it when I see all the misery that exists ... among our people, the lower orders, the very lowest especially. If they were all happy and enjoying abundance, there would be no need for me to feel it. So what is there beautiful about it?"
She gave a little laugh:
"I can't argue against that, it's too deep for me. I can't say that I have ever thought over those social questions; they have always existed as they are and ... and I have not thought about them. But I can feel, with my feminine instinct, that it is beautiful of you to feel like that, Othomar."