getically.

"And you could not forget her in the desert?" "No, it only made me
worse. Amid the sands her image would appear more distinct than
ever. Now why is it that one loves one woman more than another, and
what is there in this woman that enchants me, and from whom I cannot
escape in thought?... Yet I didn't go to see her in New York."

"But would you go if she wrote to you?" "Oh, if she wrote--that would
be different, but she never will. There is no doubt, Harding, love
is a sort of madness, and it takes every man; none can look into his
life without finding that at some time or another he was mad; the
only thing is that it has taken me rather badly, and cure seems
farther off than ever. Why is it, Harding, that a man should love
one woman so much more than another? It certainly isn't because she
has got a prettier face, or a more perfect figure, or a more sensual
temperament; for there is no end to pretty faces, perfect figures,
and sensual temperaments. Evelyn was pretty well furnished with
these things. I am prepared to admit that she was, but of course
there are more beautiful women and more sensual women, more charming
women, cleverer women--I suppose there are--yet no one ever charmed
me, enchanted me--that is the word--like this woman, and I can find
no reason for the enchantment in her or in myself, only this, that
she represents more of the divine essence out of which all things
have come than any other woman."

"The divine essence?"

"Well, one has to use these words in order to be understood; but you
know what I mean, Harding, the mystery lying behind all phenomena, the
Breath, esoteric philosophers would say, out of which all things
came, which drew the stars in the beginning out of chaos, creating
myriads of things or the appearance of different things, for there
is only one thing. That is how the mystics talk--isn't it? You know
more about them than I do. If to every man some woman represented
more of this impulse than any other woman, he would be unable to
separate himself from her; she would always be a light in his life
which he would follow, a light in the mind--that is what Evelyn is
to me; I never understood it before, it is only lately--"

"The desert has turned you into a poet, I see, into a mystic."

"Hardly that; but in the desert there are long hours and nothing--
only thought; one has to think, if one isn't a bedouin, just to save
oneself from going mad: the empty spaces, the solit