----What if she does not come back, and I do not hear any more of her?

Stop! Nicholas Thormonde, this is contemptible weakness!

* * * * *

This evening it was wonderful on the terrace, the sun set in a blaze of
crimson and purple and gold, every window in the Galerie des Glasses
seemed to be on fire--strange ghosts of by-gone courtiers appeared to be
flitting past the mirrors.

What do they think of the turmoil they have left behind them, I wonder?
Each generation torn by the same anguish which the worries of love
bring?--And what is love for?--Just to surround the re-creative instinct
with glamour and render it æsthetic?

Did cave men love?--They were exempt from pain of the mind at all
events. Civilization has augmented the mental anguishes, and pleasures
of love, and when civilization is in excess it certainly distorts and
perverts the whole passion.

But what is love anyway? the thing itself I mean. It is a want, and an
ache and a craving--I know what I want. I want firstly Alathea for my
own, with everything which that term implies of possession. Then I want
to share her thoughts, and I want to feel all the great aspirations of
her soul--I want her companionship--I want her sympathy--I want her
understanding.

When I was in love with Nina--and five or six others--I never thought of
any of these things--I just wanted their bodies: Therefore it is only
when the spiritual enters into the damned thing, I suppose, that one
could call it love. By that reasoning I have loved only Alathea in all
my life. But I am stumped with this thought--If she had one eye and no
leg below the knee--should I be in love with her? and feel all these
exalted emotions about her? I cannot honestly be certain how I would
answer that question yet, so this shows that the physical plays the
chief rôle even in a love that seems spiritual.