Do you know, with the strange irony of things,
when a woman's love for a man rises to the highest point there is in it
always an element of _the wife_? However wayward and tigerish and
undomestic she may be, she then desires to be the acknowledged possession
and belonging of the man, even to her own dishonour. She desires to
reproduce his likeness, she wants to compass his material good. She will
think of his food, and his raiment, and his well-being, and never of her
own--only, if she is wise she will hide all these things in her heart, for
the average man cannot stand this great light of her sweetness, and when
her love becomes selfless, his love will wane."
"The average man's--yes, perhaps so," agreed Paul. "But then, what does the
average person of either sex know of love at all?"
"They think they know," she said. "Really think it, but love like ours
happens perhaps once in a century, and generally makes history of some
sort--bad or good."
"Let it!" said Paul. "I am like Antony in that poem you read me last
night. I must have you for my own, 'Though death, dishonour, anything you
will, stand in the way.' He knew what he was talking about, Antony! so did
the man who wrote the poem!"
"He was a great sculptor as well as a poet," the lady said.
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