Wantley leaned forward; he threw his cigarette out of the window. 'Ah,' he said, 'that interests me! My own father became a Roman Catholic, an act on his part, by the way, of supreme renunciation. I myself can see no possible hope of finality anywhere else; but I think that, as regards human love, I should be Persian rather than monkish.' He added, smiling a little: 'I suppose the Persian theory of love is summed up by FitzGerald;' and diffidently he quoted the most famous of the quatrains, lingering over the beautiful words, for, as he uttered them, he applied them, quite consciously, to himself and Cecily Wake. What wilderness with her but would be Paradise?
Her face rose up before him as he had seen it for a moment the day before, when, coming suddenly upon her in the little wood, her honest childish eyes had shone out welcome.
Downing looked at him thoughtfully. 'Ah, no; the Persian mystic of to-day would by no means assent to such simplicity of outlook. Jami rather than Omar summed up the national philosophy. The translation is not comparable, but, still, 'twill serve to explain to you the Persian belief that renunciation of self may be acquired through the medium of a merely human love;' and he repeated the lines:
'Though in this world a hundred tasks thou tryest,
'Tis love alone which from thyself will save thee;
Even from earthly love thy face avert not,
Since to the real it may serve to raise thee.'
'That,' cried Wantley eagerly, 'absolutely satisfies me, and strikes me as being the highest truth!'
Downing again smiled—a quick, humorous smile. 'No doubt,' he said rather dryly, 'so thought the student who, seeking a great sage in order to be shown the way of spiritual perfection, received for answer: "If your steps have not yet trod the pathway of love, go hence, seek love, and, having met it, then return to me." The theory that true love, even if ill-bestowed, partakes of the Divine, is an essential part of the Sufi philosophy.'
'And yet,' objected Wantley, 'there are times when love, even if well bestowed, may have to be withdrawn, lest it should injure the creature beloved.'