In the dawn stealing over the world of London, Earl told the story, and
there and then we saw it all--the hill in the heart of the hills, the
reconciled boy who had climbed its brow, the rain-drenched woman
hurrying to overtake him, with the gift of all of herself in her eyes.
We looked neither at Barbara nor at Earl. Possessed of the secret, we
spoke a few words and left. Our host had divulged what the anniversary
sought to celebrate. We understood and were glad.
Good night, lad. Would you could have shared our heyday at the dawning!
DANE.
XIV
FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE,
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.
February 31, 19--.
Love is a something that begins in sensation and ends in sentiment.
Thanks to beautiful and permissible hyperbole, you have begun with
sensation in your description of love, and have ended with sentiment.
You have told me about love, in terms of love, which is a vain
performance and unscientific. Now let me make you a definition. _Love is
a disorder of mind and body, and is produced by passion under the
stimulus of imagination._
Love is a phase of the operation of the function of reproduction, and it
occurs solely in man. Love, adhering to the common understanding of the
term, is an emotional excitement which does not obtain among the lower
animals. The lower animals lack the stimulus of imagination, and with
them the passion for perpetuation remains a mere passion. But man has
developed imagination. The pure sexual passion is glossed over and
obscured by a cloud of fancies, mistaken yearnings, and distorted
dreams. And so well is the real intent of the function obscured, that it
is actually lost to him, especially during the period of love madness,
so that there seems an apparent divorce between the parts which go to
make up love, between passion and imagination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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