A host of new thoughts invaded her mind. As with shining eyes she glanced round, the splendour of the night, the beauty of the calm river and of the dreaming woods in moonlight seemed to penetrate her whole being. Again she was possessed by that vague longing for sheer dominant strength that should yield her delight.
“My dream is always of some golden age,” continued Sanine, “when nothing shall stand between man and his happiness, and when, fearless and free, he can gave himself up to all attainable enjoyments.”
“Yes, but how is he to do that? By a return to barbarism?”
“No. The epoch when man lived like a brute was a miserable, barbarous one, and our own epoch, in which the body, dominated by the mind, is kept under and set in the background lacks sense and vigour. But humanity has not lived in vain. It has created new conditions of life which give no scope either for grossness or asceticism.”
“Yes, but what of love? Does not that impose obligations upon us?” asked Sina hurriedly.
“No. If love imposes grievous obligations, it is through jealousy, and jealousy is the outcome of slavery. In any form slavery causes harm. Men should enjoy what love can give them fearlessly and without restrictions. If this were so, love would be infinitely richer and more varied in all its forms, and more influenced by chance and opportunity.”
“I hadn’t the least fear just now,” was Sina’s proud reflection. She suddenly looked at Sanine, feeling as if this were her first sight of him. There he sat, facing her, in the stern, a fine figure of a man; dark-eyed, broad-shouldered, intensely virile.
“What a handsome fellow!” she thought. A whole world of unknown forces and emotions lay before her. Should she enter that world? She smiled at her now curiosity, trembling all over. Sanine must have guessed what was passing in her mind. His breath came quicker, almost in gasps.
In passing through a narrow part of the stream, the oars caught in the trailing foliage and slipped from Sina’s hands.
“I can’t get along here, it’s so narrow,” she said timidly. Her voice sounded gentle and musical as the rippling of the stream.