gleams ... I have never felt the insidious horror of a love like
strong drink mounting through the blood to the brain, and there
making inextricable confusion of time, space, eternity,
everything, except the passion itself; never, never have I felt
all this, Denzil, till to-night! To-night! Bah! It is a wild night
of dancing and folly, and the Princess Ziska is to blame for it
all! Don't look so tragic, my good Denzil,--what ails you now?"

"What ails me? Good Heavens! Can you ask it!" and Murray gave a
gesture of mingled despair and impatience. "If you love her in
this wild, uncontrolled way ..."

"It is the only way I know of," said Gervase. "Love must be wild
and uncontrolled to save it from banalite. It must be a summer
thunderstorm; the heavy brooding of the clouds of thought, the
lightning of desire, then the crash, the downpour,--and the end,
in which the bland sun smiles upon a bland world of dull but
wholesome routine and tame conventionality, making believe that
there never was such a thing known as the past storm! Be consoled,
Denzil, and trust me,--you shall have time to make your honorable
proposal, and Madame had better accept you,--for your love would
last,--mine could not!"

He spoke with a strange fierceness and irritability, and his eyes
were darkened by a sudden shadow of melancholy. Denzil, bewildered
at his words and manner, stared at him in a kind of helpless
indignation.

"Then you admit yourself to be cruel and unprincipled?" he said.