“True. Almost. That’s just it. ‘Almost’ is a very uncomfortable word. I have been almost in love so many times. I have never been drawn by a woman’s eyes and dragged down, down,--in a mad whirlpool of sweetness and poison intermixed. I have never had my soul strangled by the coils of a woman’s hair--black hair, black as night,--in the perfumed meshes of which a jewelled serpent 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 _banalité_. 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. Gervase smiled, with a little shrug of impatience. “Do I? I was not aware of it. Is inconstancy to women cruelty and want of principle? If so, all men must bear the brunt of the accusation with me. For men were originally barbarians, and always looked upon women as toys or slaves; the barbaric taint is not out of us yet, I assure you,--at any rate, it is not out of me. I am a pure savage; I consider the love of woman as my right; if I win it, I enjoy it as long as I please, but no longer,--and not all the forces of heaven and earth should bind me to any woman I had once grown weary of.” “If that is your character,” said Murray stiffly, “it were well the Princess Ziska should know it.”