...If she does she's the sort that would never marry any one else
and her life would be spoilt. I don't mean to say she would give up, but
she would just keep going. That seems to me the greatest tragedy of all....
"No! Why should there be any of this conventional subterfuge. I believe
that she does care for you. I believed so long ago. I was jealous of her.
I don't mean, to say that I was in love with you. I--perhaps forced myself
not to be. It seemed too silly. Too utterly hopeless....Besides I knew
even then the danger of letting myself go...of the unbridled imagination.
Probably love is all imagination anyhow. French marriages would seem to
prove it. But we--your race and mine--have fallen into a sublime sort of
error, and we'll no more reason ourselves out of it than out of the sex
tyranny itself....I don't see how I could be happy with the eternal
knowledge that Gora was miserable--that she would be happy if I had
remained in California...."
"I have just told you that I should have gone to California as soon as I
was free."
III
The air between them quivered and their eyes were almost one. But he
remained smoking in his chair and continued:
"I marry you or no one. A man well and a man ill are two different beings.
In illness sex is dormant. When a man is well he wants a woman or he
doesn't want her. It may be neither his fault nor hers. But if she hasn't
the sex pull for him, doesn't make a powerful insistent demand upon his
passion, there is nothing to build on.
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