“Wouldn’t it?” Mr. Cardan queried. “But imagine if _flucuthukh_ turned out to mean, not drink, but love. I assure you that the feelings denoted by such a word would be quite different from those we sum up by ‘love.’ You can make a good guess from the sound of the word in any language what the people who speak it mean when they talk of love. _Amour_, for example—that long ou sound with the rolled r at the end of it, how significant it is! Ou—you have to push your lips into a snout-like formation, as though you were going to kiss. Then, briskly, rrr—you growl like a dog. Could anything be more perfectly expressive of the matter-of-fact lasciviousness which passes for love in nine-tenths of French fiction and drama? And _Liebe_—what a languishing, moonlit, sentimental sound the long ie has! And how apt, too, is the bleating labial by which it is followed!—be,—be. It is a sheep whose voice is choked by emotion. All German romanticism is implied in the sound of the word. And German romanticism, a little _détraqué_, turns quite logically into expressionismus and the wild erotic extravagance of contemporary German fiction. As for our _love_—that’s characteristically non-committal and diffident. That dim little monosyllable illustrates our English reluctance to call a spade a spade. It is the symbol of our national repressions. All our hypocrisy and all the beautiful platonism of our poetry is there. Love....” Mr. Cardan whispered the word, and holding up his finger for silence cocked his ear to catch the faint echoes of his voice reverberating from wall to wall under the sepulchral vault. “Love.... How utterly different is our English emotion from that connoted by _amore_! _Amore_—you fairly sing the second syllable, in a baritone voice, from the chest, with a little throaty tremolo on the surface to make it sound more palpitating. _Amore_—it’s the name of the quality that Stendhal so much admired in the Italians and the absence of which in his own countrymen, and more especially countrywomen, made him rank Paris below Milan or Rome—it’s the apt and perfectly expressive name of passion.” “How true!” said Mrs. Aldwinkle, brightening for a moment through her gloom. This compliment to her Italian language and Italian character touched and pleased her. “The very sound of _amore_ is passionate. If the English knew what passion meant, they’d have found a more expressive word than love. That’s certain. But they don’t know.” She sighed.