Unorna was grave and looked up into his
face, resting her chin upon her hand.
"If that is love, if that is the idol of your shrine, the vision of your
dreams, the familiar genius of your earthly paradise, why then, indeed,
he who worships by your side, and who would share the habitation of
your happiness, must wear Absalom's anointed curls and walk with Agag's
delicate step. What matter if he be but a half-witted puppet? He is
fair. What matter if he be foolish, faithless, forgetful, inconstant,
changeable as the tide of the sea? He is young. His youth shall cover
all his deficiencies and wipe out all his sins! Imperial love, monarch
and despot of the human soul, is become the servant of boys for the wage
of a girl's first thoughtless kiss. If that is love let it perish out of
the world, with the bloom of the wood violet in spring, with the flutter
of the bright moth in June, with the song of the nightingale and the
call of the mocking-bird, with all things that are fair and lovely and
sweet but for a few short days. If that is love, why then love never
made a wound, nor left a scar, nor broke a heart in this easy-going
rose-garden of a world. The rose blooms, blows, fades and withers and
feels nothing. If that is love, we may yet all develop into passionless
promoters of a flat and unprofitable commonwealth; the earth may yet be
changed to a sweetmeat for us to feed on, and the sea to sugary lemonade
for us to drink, as the mad philosopher foretold, and we may yet all be
happy after love has left us.
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