“Come, all lovers, to the feasting,
Where the wine of life is yeasting,
Soul of human, brute or flower,
This your purest, fullest hour
Drink your fill of Love’s own brew.”
Even Rhoda Carnegie’s cynical words the previous evening at the Prime Minister’s dinner-party seemed part of the day. “Is love to be confined within the small circlet of a wedding-ring? Why, it would be like trying to pour the sea into a thimble.” After all, most intelligent people nowadays scoffed at the wedding-service, with its “forevers” and “till death.” Those ideas had all been swept away.
As she rearranged the wild hyacinths for the mere pleasure of touching them, she asked herself if there still lingered any belief in those “forevers.” Honestly, no. She did realize that love is too big a thing to be confined within a wedding-ring. It was not that kind of scruple that held her back. Love, as she had once said before her marriage, was the only convention she owned. She recalled the words of James Hinton. “Love, and do as you please.” Many people had taken this as their text for lax morality, but they had not understood him rightly. It was not an easy saying, but a hard one. Love! How often did one love in a lifetime? She had thought she loved Gilbert, and she really had at the time. But his neglect and coldness had killed her love. Could a great love be killed? “Many waters cannot quench love——” was that not merely the high standard which we should all try and uphold, but can never attain to? An impossible standard, surely, except for rare, ethereal beings without sexual instincts, strong human needs.
“And I don’t want an ethereal love,” she said aloud.
The dachshund, who had been slumbering peacefully on the couch, awoke, and looked at her interrogatively. His faithful soul was afraid she had called him.
“Only talking to myself, Billiken,” she said, smiling at him. “Why, even you, Billie—I am your little world, your sun and your moon and your stars, but you like me to stroke and pat you. Oh, Billie! I must be first with someone. I don’t belong to anyone really, not of my own free will, and I want to so much, so much. I’m not strong enough to stand alone. I don’t want to stand alone.”