ill suddenly demand happiness--the real thing."

"You mean that I will fall in love again, I suppose."

"I mean that you will love."

"Now you are hair-splitting. Are you qualifying to contribute
fictionized essays to the American magazines?"

"I am stating facts and don't care a hang about sarcasm. Just now you
have spasms when some aspect of nature exalts you. I have watched you
with considerable amusement. But it is natural enough--merely a sort of
forerunner of what will happen when nature establishes her currents with
your own interior landscapes. Then there will be earthquakes and
hurricanes--your cultivated realism and inherent romanticism will become
hopelessly mixed, and you will be really happy."

"More likely, such moments are the forerunners of a state which shall be
an eternal exaltation. Personal immortality is only to be desired if it
insures the lifting of our faculties to their highest power of
expression. Anything else would mean a boundless ennui. As for my
present inertia, is it not the duty of some few to pass their lives in
appreciation of the past? Heaven knows there are enough looking out for
the present. And I am sick of the superstition that love is all. I told
you before that the happiness of women, at least, depended upon
relegating it to its proper place. Once I regretted that Prestage did
not die while I still believed in him, so that I could have lived my
life with his memory, as Concha Argueello did with Rezanov's. But even
that would have been a species of slavery, and I should have chafed at
the bond; never had this divine sense of freedom."

"I pass over the majority of your arguments--I must sleep on them. But
when have I maintained that love was all? If that were my doctrine
should I be reading my head off, investing in Class A buildings, talking
politics to farmers, and revolving plans for the conquest of California?
I should be making love to you. That is what I should like to do,
however, and what I propose to do when I am ready."

"Are you in love with me?"

"I hardly know, but I suspect that I shall be. If I deliberately choose
you now as my life partner, you cannot complain that I am the mere slave
of passion. I don't fancy I look it at this moment. I have had those
fevers, and am willing to admit their brevity. No doubt if I had not
been so occupied of late I should have had another. As it is, I am
blessedly permitted to foresee it; and to keep my brain clear enough
m