Once John said: "Why on earth do you waste a perfectly good afternoon dawdling in this place with me?"
And Neville, for a second, wondered, too; then he laughed:
"I get all that I give you, John, and more, too. Shut up and mind your business."
"What do you get from me?" demanded the literal one, astonished.
"All that you are, Johnny; which is much that I am not—but ought to be—may yet be."
"That's some sort of transcendental philosophy, isn't it?" grumbled the sculptor.
"You ought to know better than I, John. The sacred codfish never penetrated to the Hudson. Inde irac!"
Yes, truly, whatever it was that had crept into his veins had imperceptibly suffused him, enveloped him—and was working changes. He had a vague idea, sometimes, that Valerie had been the inception, the source, the reagent in the chemistry which was surely altering either himself or the world of men around him; that the change was less a synthesis than a catalysis—that he was gradually becoming different because of her nearness to him—her physical and spiritual nearness.
He had plenty of leisure to think of her while she was away; but thought of her was now only an active ebullition of the ceaseless consciousness of her which so entirely possessed him. When a selfish man loves—if he really loves—his disintegration begins.
Waking, sleeping, in happiness, in perplexity, abroad, at home, active or at rest, inspired or weary, alone or with others, an exquisite sense of her presence on earth invaded him, subtly refreshing him with every breath he drew. He walked abroad amid the city crowds companioned by her always; at rest the essence of her stole through and through him till the very air around seemed sweetened.