Now mark what follows. I didn't--I couldn't--degrade her; but I saw myself
dragging like a worm in the mud while she soared out of my reach. And
there I've been--of the slime slimy ever since. Where she is now I don't
know, but I think in heaven. Heaven lay in her eyes--and whenever I look
at the sky at night I see her there."
"You are talking above my head," said the stranger, "or above your own.
Either I am a fool, or you a madman. You love a woman, and give her to
another man? You love her, and secure her in slavery? You love her, and
don't want her?"
"It is I that am the fool, not you," said Senhouse. "I do want her. I want
nothing else in earth or heaven. And yet I know that I have her for ever.
Our souls have touched each other. She is mine and I am hers. And yet I
want her."
"Won't you get her? Don't you believe that you will?"
"God knows! God knows!"
"She was beautiful?"
"The dawn," said Senhouse, "was not more purely lovely than she. The dawn
was in her face--the awfulness of it as well as its breathless beauty."
"My mistress," said the young man, "had the gait of a goddess in the corn.
One thought of Demeter in the wheat. She was like ivory under the moon.
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