Othmar

by Ouida

'That is a theory. In fact, the only satisfactory love is one which gives and receives mutual pleasure. When there is self-sacrifice on one side the pleasure also is one-sided.'

'Then the revellers of the Decamerone knew more of love than Dante?'

'That is approaching a theme too full of dangers to be discussed—the difference between physical and spiritual love. I do not consider that you have satisfactorily answered the previous question: What is the greatest dilemma of Love?'

'When, in the open doorway of its house of life, one passion, grown old and grey, passes out limping, and meets another passion newly come thither, and laughing, with the blossoms of April in its sunny hair.'

'What a sonnet in a sentence! What is Love to do in such a case? Shall he detain the grey-haired crippled guest?'

'He cannot. For the more he shall endeavour to retain him the thinner and paler and more impalpable will the withered and lame passion grow.'

'And the newly-come one?'

'Oh, he will enter, smiling and strong, and will fill the house with the music of his pipe and the odour of his hyacinths for awhile, until he too shall in turn pass outwards, when his music is silent and his flowers are dead.'

'Is Love then always to be mourned like Lycidas?'