FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172  
173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   196   197   >>   >|  
thing to do with it? Certainly not: he had thought her at that time a rather conceited child. Knight's experience was a complete disproof of the assumption that love always comes by glances of the eye and sympathetic touches of the fingers: that, like flame, it makes itself palpable at the moment of generation. Not till they were parted, and she had become sublimated in his memory, could he be said to have even attentively regarded her. Thus, having passively gathered up images of her which his mind did not act upon till the cause of them was no longer before him, he appeared to himself to have fallen in love with her soul, which had temporarily assumed its disembodiment to accompany him on his way. She began to rule him so imperiously now that, accustomed to analysis, he almost trembled at the possible result of the introduction of this new force among the nicely adjusted ones of his ordinary life. He became restless: then he forgot all collateral subjects in the pleasure of thinking about her. Yet it must be said that Knight loved philosophically rather than with romance. He thought of her manner towards him. Simplicity verges on coquetry. Was she flirting? he said to himself. No forcible translation of favour into suspicion was able to uphold such a theory. The performance had been too well done to be anything but real. It had the defects without which nothing is genuine. No actress of twenty years' standing, no bald-necked lady whose earliest season 'out' was lost in the discreet mist of evasive talk, could have played before him the part of ingenuous girl as Elfride lived it. She had the little artful ways which partly make up ingenuousness. There are bachelors by nature and bachelors by circumstance: spinsters there doubtless are also of both kinds, though some think only those of the latter. However, Knight had been looked upon as a bachelor by nature. What was he coming to? It was very odd to himself to look at his theories on the subject of love, and reading them now by the full light of a new experience, to see how much more his sentences meant than he had felt them to mean when they were written. People often discover the real force of a trite old maxim only when it is thrust upon them by a chance adventure; but Knight had never before known the case of a man who learnt the full compass of his own epigrams by such means. He was intensely satisfied with one aspect of the affair. Inbred in him wa
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172  
173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   196   197   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Knight
 

experience

 

bachelors

 

nature

 

thought

 
doubtless
 
artful
 

circumstance

 
ingenuousness
 

spinsters


partly

 

played

 
necked
 

earliest

 
season
 

standing

 
genuine
 
actress
 

twenty

 

ingenuous


Elfride

 

evasive

 

discreet

 

defects

 

thrust

 

chance

 

adventure

 

discover

 

affair

 

written


People

 
epigrams
 

aspect

 

intensely

 

compass

 
learnt
 

satisfied

 
bachelor
 

coming

 
looked

However
 

sentences

 
Inbred
 
theories
 

subject

 

reading

 
philosophically
 

passively

 
gathered
 

images