y
and indubitably, not losing it even when his besetting despair stood
between him and the sun, was the power to talk. While he was speaking
the dominoes lay untouched on the greasy cafe table; men bent forward on
their elbows that with his tongue he might make them companions of men
who were half the world distant, maybe the whole world distant in their
graves, that he might warm them with the beams of a sun long set on a
horizon they would never see. That was vanity; or, more justly, the
filling in of dangerously empty hours, holes in existence through which
it seemed likely the soul might run out. But now, when it was absolutely
necessary that he should tell her what she was to him, he could not talk
at all. He stuttered on to try to win in the way he knew her generous
heart could be won by a statement of her new joy.

"Ellen--you know what I mean? There's a particular kind of rapture that
comes when you're looking at an impersonal thing. I mean a thing that
doesn't amuse you, doesn't tickle up your greed or vanity, doesn't feed
you. Like looking at the dawn. I feel like that when I look at you. And
yet you are so sweet too. Oh, you dear Puritan, you will not like me to
say you are like scent. But you are. Even at the feminine game you could
beat all other women. You see, it is the loveliest thing in the world to
watch women dancing; but with other women, when their bodies stop it's
all over. They stand beside you showing minds that have never moved,
that have been paralysed since they were babies. But when you stopped
dancing your soul would go on dancing. Your mind has as neat ankles as
your body. You are the treasure of this earth! Ellen, do you know that I
am a little frightened? I do believe that love is a real magic."

He had fallen into that lecturer's manner she had noticed on the first
night at the office, when he had told them about bullfights. Her heart
pricked with pride because she perceived that now she was his subject.

"I have been up and down the world and I have seen no other real magic.
I do not believe that in this age God has altered anyone. People love
God nowadays as much as the temperaments they were born with tell them
to. He has grown too old for miracles. After two thousand years he has
no longer the force to turn water into wine. Ellen, I love your dear
prim smile. But always, everywhere, I have found the love of men and
women doing that. Sometimes the love of places does something very l