“Diana,” he said slowly—“If this is true,—and may God be the arbiter!—one thing in your former circumstances is altered—you are not ‘without claims on your time and your affections.’ I claim both! I have made you as you are!—you are mine!”
She smiled proudly and retreated a step or two.
“I am no more yours,” she said, “than are the elements of which your science has composed the new and youthful vesture of my unchanging Soul! I admit no claim. When I served you as your ‘subject,’ you were ready to sacrifice my life to your ambition; now when you are witness to the triumph of your ‘experiment,’ you would grasp what you consider as your lawful prize. Self!—all Self! But I have a Self as well—and it is a Self independent of all save its own elements.”
He caught her hands suddenly.
“Love is in all elements,” he said. “There would be no world, no universe without love!”
Her eyes met his as steadily as stars.
“There is no such thing as Love in all mankind!” she said. “The race is cruel, destructive, murderous. What men call love is merely sex-attraction—such as is common to all the animal world. Children are to be born in order that man may be perpetuated. Why, one cannot imagine! His civilisations perish—he himself is the merest grain of dust in the universe,—unless he learns to subdue his passions and progresses to a higher order of being on this earth, which he never will. All things truly are possible, save man’s own voluntary uplifting. And without this uplifting there is no such thing as Love.”
He still held her hands.
“May I not endeavour to reach this height?” he asked, and his voice shook a little. “Have patience with me, Diana! You have beauty, wealth, youth——”
She interrupted him.