"All that! Amaryllis is the exact opposite to Harietta Boleski--in this, that she attracts as strongly as Harietta could ever do physically, and will be no disappointment in soul in the _entre actes_. _Being in love_ is a physical state of exaltation; _loving_ is the merging of spirit which in its white heat has glorified the physical instinct for re-creation into a godlike beatitude not of earth. A man could be in love with Harietta, he could never love her. A man could always love Amaryllis, so much that he would not be aware that half his joy was because he was _in love_ with her also." "You know, Stepan, men, women and every one talk a lot of nonsense about other interests in life mattering more, and there being other kinds of really better happiness, but it is pure rot; if one is honest one owns that there is no real happiness but in the satisfaction of love. Every other kind is second best. It is jolly good often, but only a _pis aller_ in comparison to the real thing. "And when people deny this, believing they are speaking honestly, it is simply because the real thing has not come their way, or they are too brutalised by transient indulgences to be able to feel exaltation. "So here's to love!" and Denzil emptied his glass. "The supreme God--" _"Ainsi soit il,"_ and Stepan drank in response. "Our toast before has always been to the Ardayre son, and now we drink to what I hope has been his creator!" They were silent for some moments, and then Verisschenzko went on: "When the state of being in love is waning, affection often remains, but then one is at the mercy of a new emotion. I'd be nervous if a woman who had loved me subsided into feeling affection!" "Then define loving?" "Loving throbs with delight in the flesh; it thrills the spirit with reverence. It glorifies into beauty commonplace things. It draws nearer in sickness and sorrow, and is not the sport of change. When a woman loves truly she has the passion of the mistress, the selfless tenderness of the mother, the dignity and devotion of the wife. She is all fire and snow, all will and frankness, all passion and reserve, she is authoritative and obedient--queen and child." "And a man?" "He ceases to be a brute and becomes a god." "Can it last, I wonder?" and again Denzil sighed. "It could if people were not such fools--they nearly always deliberately destroy the loved one's emotion by senseless stupidity--in not grasping the fact that no fire burns without fuel. They disillusionise each other. The joy once secured, they take no pains to keep it. A woman will do things when the lover is an acknowledged possession, which she would not have dreamed of doing while desiring to attract the man--and a man likewise--neither realising that the whole state of being in love is an intoxication of the senses, and that the senses are very easily wearied or affronted."