"I want ye!"
Power got up. "I'll see what is wanted. But first our pledge."
The steps of Power died away, and King and Maud Neville were left alone. Nelson had died at last, and now the cornet asked, "Alice, where art thou?" One or two crickets beneath the house accompanied it. Presently King must have moved his chair, because there was a sudden creak.
"I am going to write a treatise on love to aid the beginner."
"How many volumes?"
King shook his head. "You mock me. You think because my heart is widely proportioned, and because there are several little dead affairs stacked neatly on upper shelves, that each of those visitors cost nothing to admit, and that now one cannot be told from another. You are mistaken." Again he shook his head. "Each of those visitors left its footprints on the threshold, and memory can still find them in the dustiest, most forgotten corners. No, hide your smiles."
"Go on, you stupid, I love listening to you."
"Love comes always in the same way, whether it be the great affair that tramples ruthless and leaves us crushed on the road, or whether it arrives with hammer and chisel, playfully to knock off a corner of the heart. For love flows forward in a ripple of waters over which pass sweetest breezes. So slowly it moves, so gently it rises, that one is lost ere the danger be discovered. In the first sprays that dash the drowner's mouth lie its best, its purest."
"And after?"
"Alas! the tide brings refreshment with it, and lovers wake hungry, and what had seemed two shafts from heaven become a woman's eyes. And so the descent to earth is trod again in steps of kisses." He held out his arm. "Look at the moon slung there, a great silver platter! How many thousands of us have cried out for it? Yet it is only a barren mountain region, scarred and ugly. But we never learn this, because we do not draw near. Love is a mirage. Love is the dancing of the marsh lights. Therefore pursue, but do not draw near. For once you touch the shining thing its glamour shall depart, and as the millstone of satiation it shall hang about your neck."