"Well," she went on, feigning discontent, while her very heart seemed pulsating in notes of perfect happiness--"well, you find some woman whom you can idealise and adore, and if she be but passably gracious to you, you proceed to make a world of happiness for yourselves merely from loving her, dreaming of her, writing poems to her or painting pictures that you think she has inspired--though really it is nothing but your own capacity for loving that she has made active that is the true source of your inspiration. Even if you rarely see her it seems to make very little difference--you still dream, still find inspirations, still do great work under the divine influence of Aphrodite. You live in the enchanted Palace of Love, and once safely there, are horribly independent of the woman who opened its magic portals to you. Oh, sorry fate that led me to love an artist! So long as I condescend to exist and remain tolerably young and beautiful, all is well. I cannot possibly feel that your entire happiness depends upon my presence or my absence, my smile or my frown. Now do you see my grievance?" "I can't believe you know it, but you actually seem to imply that you care for me more sincerely, more humanly, than I do for you, which is obviously impossible." "I don't see the 'obviousness.' I should rather like to." "I'll soon tell you. You won't laugh at me?" "Laugh! Oh, my darling!" "Well, then, the fact that it is you, your own dear self, that I so glory in, and not any mere abstract mental condition, is proved by this. I confess I always hoped the time would come when I should be genuinely in love. That's what you are not to laugh at, by the way! I knew somehow that I had all the capacity for intense devotion, and naturally enough, I suppose, longed to exercise it. So if practically any young and attractive woman would have served as the sort of figure-head you describe, should I have been forced to wait--unwillingly enough, I can tell you--until you, my only possible beloved, appeared upon the scene? Of course not." "You had to wait for me--for me--for me!" sang Evarne, keeping the time in her little song of triumph by clapping her hands. "It is very wicked of you to be so pleased about it. Why did you not come along earlier, my blessing? It is a perfect misery, nothing else, to be empty-hearted. It is terrible to feel a thousand emotions seeking desperately for an outlet. Why did your star linger so long in crossing mine?" But no sympathy was to be extracted from Evarne.