voice of any other man. I cannot quite see that now. But it is all
madness. You call into activity one part of my nature; there is a higher
part that you know nothing of, that you never touch. If I married you,
afterward it would arise and assert itself, and I should hate you always,
as I do now sometimes."

"I like you when you grow metaphysical and analytical," he said, leaning
his face upon his hand. "Go a little further in your analysis; say, 'I
love you with the right ventricle of my heart, but not the left, and with
the left auricle of my heart, but not the right; and, this being the case,
my affection for you is not of a duly elevated, intellectual and spiritual
nature.' I like you when you get philosophical."

She looked quietly at him; he was trying to turn her own weapons against
her.

"You are acting foolishly, Lyndall," he said, suddenly changing his manner,
and speaking earnestly, "most foolishly. You are acting like a little
child; I am surprised at you. It is all very well to have ideals and
theories; but you know as well as any one can that they must not be carried
into the practical world. I love you. I do not pretend that it is in any
high, superhuman sense; I do not say that I should like you as well if you
were ugly and deformed, or that I should continue to prize you whatever
your treatment of me might be, or to love you though you were a spirit
without any body at all. That is sentimentality for beardless boys. Every
one not a mere child (and you are not a child, except in years) knows what
love between a man and a woman means. I love you with that love. I should
not have believed it possible that I could have brought myself twice to ask
of any woman to be my wife, more especially one without wealth, without
position, and who--"