lectual accidents, but for the very
woman. Guided by the self-evident axiom that humanity is to be judged by
literature, and not literature by humanity, he detected the analogy
between _Lycidas_ and Annie. Only the dullard would object to the
nauseous cant of the one, or to the indiscretions of the other. A sober
critic might say that the man who could generalize Herbert and Laud,
Donne and Herrick, Sanderson and Juxon, Hammond and Lancelot Andrewes
into "our corrupted Clergy" must be either an imbecile or a scoundrel, or
probably both. The judgment would be perfectly true, but as a criticism
of _Lycidas_ it would be a piece of folly. In the case of the woman one
could imagine the attitude of the conventional lover; of the chevalier
who, with his tongue in his cheek, "reverences and respects" all women,
and coming home early in the morning writes a leading article on St
English Girl. Lucian, on the other hand, felt profoundly grateful to the
delicious Annie, because she had at precisely the right moment
voluntarily removed her image from his way. He confessed to himself that,
latterly, he had a little dreaded her return as an interruption; he had
shivered at the thought that their relations would become what was so
terribly called an "intrigue" or "affair." There would be all the
threadbare and common stratagems, the vulgarity of secret assignations,
and an atmosphere suggesting the period of Mr. Thomas Moore and Lord
Byron and "segars." Lucian had been afraid of all this; he had feared lest
love itself should destroy love.

He considered that now, freed from the torment of the body, leaving
untasted the green water that makes thirst more burning, he was perfectly
initiated in the true knowledge of the splendid and glorious love. There
seemed to him a monstrous paradox in the assertion that there could be no
true love without a corporal presence of the beloved; even the popular
sayings of "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," and "familiarity breeds
contempt," witnessed to the contrary. He thought, sighing, and with
compassion, of the manner in which men are continually led astray by the
cheat of the senses. In order that the unborn might still be added to the
born, nature had inspired men with the wild delusion that the bodily
companionship of the lover and the beloved was desirable above all
things, and so, by the false show of pleasure, the human race was chained
to vanity, and doomed to an eternal thirst for the non