"You can't like her from the wrong motive. You can't have a motive at all, if it comes to that. You might have a motive for killing her, or for cultivating her acquaintance, but not for liking her. You either like a person or not, and there's an end of it."
"If your motives are not yourself, what are they?"
"Lord only knows. Forces, tendencies, that determine your actions, which are the very smallest part of you. What you call intuitions, your feelings—hate (I should say you were a good hater), and love——" (her eyes, which had been fixed on his, dropped suddenly), "don't wait for motives. They're the only spontaneous things about you, the only realities you know." (And of these he had said just now that the last reality was sex. It was his point of view, a point from which it appeared that for him Miss Tancred had no existence.) "Of course there may be some transcendental sense in which they're not realities at all; but as far as we are concerned they're not only real, but positively self-existent."
As he thus discoursed, Durant blinked critically at the sky, while his pencil described an airy curve on the infinite blue, symbolizing the grace, the fluency, and the vastness of his thought.
"They, if you like, are you. It's very odd that you don't seem to trust them more."
She had turned from him till her face was a thin outline against the sky. She had a fine head, and carried it well, too; and at the moment the twilight dealt tenderly with her dress and face; it purified the tragic pallor of her forehead and all but defined that vague, haunting suggestion of a possible charm. Durant had it a moment ago—there—then. Ah! now he had lost it.
"I daren't trust my feelings. I can't. There are too many of them. They won't work the same way. They're all fighting against each other."
"Then let them fight it out, and let the strongest win."
"If I only knew which was the strongest."
"You'll know some day. In the long run, you see, the strongest is bound to win."