.

"Look you, adorable and all-masterful Sesphra, I have followed noble
loves. I aspired to the Unattainable Princess, and thereafter to the
unattainable Queen of a race that is more fine and potent than our race,
and afterward I would have no less a love than an unattainable angel in
paradise. Hah, I must be fit mate for that which is above me, was my
crying in the old days; and such were the indomitable desires that one
by one have made my living wonderful with dear bewitchments.

"The devil of it was that these proud aims did not stay unattained!
Instead, I was cursed by getting my will, and always my reward was
nothing marvelous and rare, but that quite ordinary figure of earth, a
human woman. And always in some dripping dawn I have turned with
abhorrence from myself and from the sated folly that had hankered for
such prizes, which, when possessed, showed as not wonderful in anything,
and which possession left likable enough, but stripped of dear
bewitchments.

"No, Sesphra, no: men are so made that they must desire to mate with
some woman or another, and they are furthermore so made that to mate
with a woman does not content their desire. And in this gaming there is
no gain, because the end of loving, for everybody except those lucky
persons whose love is not requited, must always be a sick disgust and a
self-despising, which the wise will conduct in silence, and not talk
about as I am talking now under your dear bewitchments."

Then Sesphra smiled a little, saying, "And yet, poor Manuel, there is,
they tell me, no more uxorious husband anywhere."

"I am used to her," Manuel replied, forlornly, "and I suppose that if
she were taken away from me again I would again be attempting to fetch
her back. And I do not like to hurt the poor foolish heart of her by
going against her foolish notions. Besides, I am a little afraid of her,
because she is always able to make me uncomfortable. And above all, of
course, the hero of a famous love-affair, such as ours has become, with
those damned poets everywhere making rhymes about my fidelity and
devotion, has to preserve appearances. So I get through each day,
somehow, by never listening very attentively to the interminable things
she tells me about. But I often wonder, as I am sure all husbands
wonder, why Heaven ever made a creature so tedious and so unreasonably
dull of wit and so opinionated. And when I think that for the rest of
time this creature is to be my companion