“It is not love that repels me—” she said, “It is what is called love, in this world,—a selfish sentiment that is not love at all. I assure you I am not insensible to your affection for me, my dear Duke, ... I wish for your sake I were differently constituted.”
She paused a moment, then added hastily, “See, the others are out of sight—do let us overtake them.”
She moved away quickly with that soft gliding tread of hers which reminded one of a poet’s sylph walking on a moonbeam, and he paced beside her, half mortified, yet not altogether without hope.
“Why are you so anxious to see this man who has lost his wits,—this El-Râmi Zarânos?” he asked, with a touch of jealousy in his accents—“Was he more to you than most people?”
She raised her eyes with an expression of grave remonstrance.
“Your thoughts wrong me—” she said simply—“I never saw El-Râmi but twice in my life,—I only pitied him greatly. I used to have a strong instinct upon me that all would not be well with him in the end.”
“Why?”
“First, because he had no faith,—secondly, because he had an excess of pride. He dismissed God out of his calculations altogether, and was perfectly content to rely on the onward march of his own intellect. Intellectual Egoism is always doomed to destruction,—this seems to be a Law of the Universe. Indeed, Egoism, whether sensual or intellectual, is always a defiance of God.”
Strathlea walked along in silence for a minute, then he said abruptly:
“It is odd to hear you speak like this, as if you were a religious woman. You are not religious,—every one says so,—you are a free-thinker,—and also, pardon me for repeating it, society supposes you to be full of this sin you condemn—Intellectual Egoism.”